China's Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy announced on Sunday that the next round of talks for a trilateral free trade agreement (FTA) involving China, Japan and South Korea will be held from Nov. 24-28 in Tokyo, the Beijing Review reported.
The negotiations for a China-Japan-South Korea trilateral FTA were set in motion in Nov. 2012. The first official talks on the matter were held in Seoul on March 26-28, 2013. Further talks were held in China and Japan throughout 2013. The upcoming round of talks in Tokyo will be the sixth.
In the past two years, the three sides have been discussing issues affecting various areas that may affect relations among the three nations comprising the proposed free trade bloc--including goods, services, investment, competition, intellectual property rights, e-commerce and environment--under the principle of achieving a comprehensive and high-level FTA, the ministry said.
According to the ministry, the delegates from the three countries to the upcoming round will be focusing mainly on finding ways to resolve remaining issues pertaining to modality or basic guideline, goods liberalization and how to liberalize services and investment. There are still pending differences over these issues among the three nations, the ministry said.
The sixth trilateral FTA round of talks comes after Chinese President Xi Jinping and South Korean President Park Geun-hye have confirmed in Beijing on Nov. 10 the conclusion of the substantive negotiations on the China-South Korea bilateral FTA.
By end of 2014, all negotiations pertaining to the China-South Korea bilateral FTA will be wrapped up. The agreement is expected to be signed in early 2015, and to take effect in the second half of next year.
South Korea's trade ministry said that it will seek to maintain consistency in the China-Japan-South Korea trilateral FTA talks with the already agreed China-South Korea bilateral FTA.
The South Korean trade ministry said that it will also actively participate in the negotiations for the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), a proposed multilateral FTA for the establishment of a bigger trade bloc that will include China, South Korea, Japan and 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), along with India, Australia and New Zealand.