As China's economy shifts from high-speed growth to high-quality development and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) came into effect in China and Japan in January, a better environment and more market opportunities will be created for Japanese companies to invest in China, said the Chinese ambassador to Japan.

Kong Xuanyou, China's Ambassador to Japan, delivered a speech and exchanged opinions with representatives from more than 100 Japanese companies on Tuesday, during a conference held by the Japan China Investment Promotion Organization (JCIPO), according to a release by China's Embassy in Japan on Wednesday.

In recent years, investment of Chinese enterprises in Japan has grown steadily, expanding from manufacturing to new areas such as communications, Internet and financial services, said Kong.

"I hope that Japanese companies will continue to actively invest in China and at the same time support investment of Chinese companies in Japan to complement each other's advantages and achieve common development with Chinese companies," the ambassador noted.

In 2021, China's paid-in foreign investment reached 1.1 trillion yuan ($168 billion) for the first time. Some 48,000 new foreign-funded enterprises were established, a year-on-year increase of 23.5 percent.

The epidemic has made people-to-people exchanges between the two countries difficult in the past two years. Even so, Japan's investment in China still reached 1.1 trillion yen ($8.58 billion) in 2021, making China a top destination for Japanese overseas investment, said Yasuhiro Sato, Chairman of the JCIPO.

"In 2021, bilateral trade reached 38.3 trillion yen ($298.9 billion) and China has been Japan's largest trade partner for 15 consecutive years. Japan is also China's second largest trading partner," said Sato.

Kong suggested that Japanese companies can step up investment and research and development in China in high-end intelligent manufacturing and biotechnology and look for opportunities for development in China's industrial structure optimization and upgrading.

The ambassador also suggested that Japanese companies should conduct in-depth cooperation with China in new areas, like hydrogen energy utilization and biodegradability, amid global efforts to address climate change.

Japanese business representatives expressed their confidence on the bilateral cooperation.

Hiroyuki Sato, President and CEO of Toshiba Electronic Devices & Storage Corporation, said that he is mainly responsible for semiconductor, manufacturing equipment and memory business.

"At present, the business in China accounts for about 30 percent of the total turnover of the company and we will continue to increase cooperation with China in the future," Sato remarked.

"In my view, although there is sometimes competition between Japanese and Chinese companies in China's domestic market and in international markets, such as Asia, there are still many areas of complementarity and cooperation between the two countries," he noted.

Additionally, Tetsuro Homma, head of Panasonic Operational Excellence Co China and Northeast Asia mentioned that "having worked in China for a long time, I felt the same way with Ambassador Kong, who said in his speech that China has overcome numerous difficulties in the past two years and is full of confidence in its future development."

Homma detailed that he just returned to China from Japan and is now in a quarantine hotel in Dalian, Northeast China's Liaoning Province.

According to Homma, Panasonic has been actively involved in China's modernization for 44 years. The business scale of Panasonic in China stood at 2.7 trillion yen ($21 billion) in 2021, up 111 percent from the previous year. It has set up about 70 branches in China and employs about 55,000 people.

Besides cooperation, Kong also warned that some people deliberately engage in ideological confrontation, fabricate the so-called "China threat" and even push for decoupling from China in the name of "economic security," to disrupt China's development process.

"In the era of economic globalization, forcibly disintegrating world markets, and cutting off global industrial and supply chains are bound to cause damage and deliver a severe shock to the world economy which has already been heavily affected by COVID-19," Kong remarked.

"I hope that the Japanese business community will respect market rules, look for its own interests, continue to carry out mutually beneficial cooperation with Chinese enterprises, and maintain stability of industrial and supply chains," said Kong.