Deals inked as Chinese premier starts visit to South Korea

South Korean President Park Geun-hye looks as Chinese Premier Li Keqiang signs bilateral cooperation documents in Seoul, capital of South Korea, Oct 31, 2015. [Photo/Xinhua]

The Li-Park meeting was held one day ahead of the widely-watched sixth China-Japan-ROK trilateral meeting, which resumed after a three-and-half-year break amid signs of thawing relations between Beijing and Tokyo.

The meeting, an annual event since 2008, was suspended in 2012 after Japanese leaders' reluctance to atone for the country's wartime past and a territorial dispute chilled Tokyo's relations with its East Asian neighbors.

Li, along with Park and the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, are to exchange views on trilateral cooperation and regional and global issues of common concern, meet with press and attend a business meeting.

Occupying an overwhelming gravity in Asian economy and a significant share of world economy, China, Japan and the ROK are working for closer economic and cultural ties, aiming at reinforcing regional integration and global cooperation, while beefing up political trust.

Those three neighbors, also the three biggest economies in East Asia, started the FTA negotiations in November 2012 with focus on commodity trade, services and investment.

The next round of the trilateral negotiations scheduled at the end of this year might include talks on commodity tariff reduction and services market access.

In Saturday's meeting, Li urged efforts to facilitate negotiations of the China-Japan-ROK trilateral free trade zone (FTZ) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) to better link the region.

Analysts say the three-way cooperation is essential for those countries' own growth and that of the region at large against the backdrop of a global economic slowdown.