8th Northeast Asia Trade Expo opens in NE China

The 8th Northeast Asia Investment and Trade Expo opened Thursday in Changchun, capital of northeast China's Jilin province.

The six-day trade fair is expected to attract more than 10,000 businessmen from 109 countries including Japan, Russia, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), the Republic of Korea (ROK) and Mongolia.

The expo serves as a platform for buyers and traders from different countries to communicate and further boost trade cooperation. Representatives from 103 of the Fortune Global 500 companies will also participate in the expo.

The trade fair was first held in 2005 and serves as a permanent and stable dialogue mechanism in Northeast Asia. On the sidelines of the expo, a series of economic cooperation forums will be held.

Trade cooperation among these countries in the region would provide fresh impetus to the recovering global economy, said Vice Minister of Commerce Jiang Zengwei at the High Level Forum on Northeast Aisa Economic and Trade Cooperation of the expo.

Japan, Russia's far east, the DPRK, the ROK, Mongolia and China's provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning and northeastern part of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region make up Northeast Asia, which covers a combined area of nearly 9 million square km and is home to about 300 million people.

Combined gross domestic product of Northeast Asia accounts for about one fifth of the world's total and more than 70 percent of that of Asia.