Japan's agriculture, for example, is an issue not only in its FTA negotiations with China and South Korea, but also in the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiation (TPP) with the United States, Yang said.
Experts say China's industrial areas such as iron and steel, petrochemical engineering and automobile production may be affected, while South Korea' s manufacturing industry, especially in such aspects as large machinery and nonferrous metals, is weaker than that of Japan and regarded as a sensitive field.
But political factors pose more barriers than economic calculations to the trilateral FTA negotiations, Lee, the South Korean expert, pointed out.
The high-level trilateral meeting mechanism was suspended in 2012, when China-Japan and South Korea-Japan relations soured due to disputes over historical and territorial issues.
Among others, constant visits by Japanese ministers and lawmakers to the Yasukuni shrine that honors 14 Class-A convicted war criminals from WWII have become a major obstacle for Japan to mend ties with its two closest neighbors of China and South Korea, as both had suffered most from Japan's wartime atrocities.
The bad political atmosphere makes it harder to achieve progress in FTA negotiations, Yang said.
However, despite political and economic barriers, economic and trade circles in each country long for an FTA to promote their economic interaction.
At the 10th China-Northeast Asia Expo held in China' s Jilin Province in September, merchants enthusiastically discussed the China-Japan-South Korea FTA negotiations.
Japanese and South Korean enterprises actively participated in the first China, Japan and ROK Industries Expo, also in September, with 332 companies showing up, accounting for 57.3 percent of the total, South Korea's JoongAng Daily said on its Chinese website.
As cooperation between the three countries is gradually expanding to more fields, the business community in each country has been increasingly demanding an FTA to magnify convenience and advantages, said Secretary-General of the China-Japan-ROK Trilateral Cooperation Secretariat Yang Houlan.
SEIZING OPPORTUNITIES THAT DON'T COME EASILY
China-Japan relations have shown momentum of improvement with the signing of a four-point principled agreement in November 2014, which includes resuming political, diplomatic and security dialogues while acknowledging their different positions on the Diaoyu Islands.
In 2012, Tokyo's unilateral move to "purchase" and "nationalize" part of the Diaoyu Islands, an inherent part of Chinese territory documented and validated in history, seriously strained China-Japan relations.
As an important event on the diplomacy front, a trilateral foreign ministerial meeting was held for the first time in three years in March, during which the three top diplomats expressed their hope that the meeting would see the beginning of a restoration process of the trilateral cooperation mechanism.
"I hope Japan could grasp the opportunity and face up to history in order to unload the historical burden and advance toward the future with its neighbors," Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said.
The ministers also promised to accelerate their trilateral FTA talks, which will undoubtedly be further boosted by the upcoming summit in Seoul.
The renewed meeting will inject a political impetus into the strenuous efforts to build a free trade area, Yang Xiyu said.
In addition, the landmark China-South Korea FTA reached in June is also seen as a boost for a trilateral one.
Under the deal, South Korea will eliminate tariffs on 92 percent of all imports from China within 20 years after its implementation, while China is to abolish tariffs on 91 percent of all imported South Korean goods.
South Korea expects the bilateral FTA to raise its real GDP by 0.95 percentage points and create 53,800 new jobs in the next 10 years.
Junichi Sugawara with the Mizuho Research Institute said Japan should urgently reach an FTA with China and South Korea as the China-South Korea FTA puts Japanese companies in disadvantaged positions when competing against companies in the two countries.
Experts have also said that the trilateral FTA should run parallel with the recently reached TPP deal and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) still under negotiation, and that Japan should value all of them.
"If Japan loses the Japan-China-South Korea FTA and the RCEP because it chooses the TPP, then TPP would become meaningless," Junichi Arai with Japan Center for Economic Research said.
Intensifying economic cooperation with China is the best way for Japan to revive its stalled economy, as some positive factors brought by the "Abenomics" seem exhausted, Kiyoyuki Seguchi, research director of Japanese think tank Canon Institute for Global Studies told Xinhua in April.
Once implemented, a trilateral FTA will bring together a market of more than 1.5 billion people, raising China's GDP by 2.9 percent, Japan's 0.5 percent and South Korea's 3.1 percent, the Financial Times said.
Opportunities between the three countries do not come easily. They should properly handle their differences through negotiations and work for an early conclusion of the FTA talks.
