Over the years, Jiangsu has maintained close cooperation and exchanges with Japan, and the economic and trade exchanges have yielded fruitful results. At present, Japan is the third largest trading country in Jiangsu, while Jiangsu has become the second largest province in China for trade with Japan.
In 2018, the total import and export trade between Jiangsu and Japan reached US$59.91 billion, a year-on-year increase of 6.8%, accounting for about one-fifth of China-Japan import and export trade. Jiangsu’s exports to Japan reached US$29.57 billion, up 8.3% year-on-year. Its imports from Japan were US$30.34 billion, up 5.4% year-on-year. The trade products of both parties are mainly concentrated in the fields of machinery, electrical equipment, optics, photography, textiles and chemicals.
Jiangsu and Japan have also maintained active two-way investment. Japan's investment in Jiangsu has gradually expanded from textiles and home appliances to machinery and electronics and further into smart manufacturing, new energy and finance, and logistics industries. Toyota, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Hitachi, Sharp and other well-known Japanese multinational companies have launched important investment projects in Jiangsu with good return on investment.
As of the end of December 2018, Japan had accumulated a total of 8,637 investment projects in Jiangsu, with a contractual foreign investment of US$43.67 billion and an actual use of foreign investment of US$29.1 billion. The province has launched 120 investment projects in Japan with the contractual investment from the Chinese side amounting to US$730 million.
