新时期中日友好城市交流蓬勃发展

新时期中日友好城市交流蓬勃发展

今年是中日两国开展友城交流43周年。在中日两国实现邦交正常化的翌年，1973年6月24日，中国天津市与日本神户市缔结为友好城市，从而诞生了中国与日本，也是中国与外国间的第一对友好城市。从此，中日两国友城交流揭开了蓬勃发展的新篇章。

40多年来，友城交流作为中日两国地方交往的重要渠道和平台，在诸多领域取得长足发展，不仅为我国其后与世界其他国家开展地方交流发挥了先导性、示范性作用，也为促进双方地方经济社会发展，推动中日友好合作不断拓展，加深两国人民友谊，维护中日友好大局发挥了特殊作用,成为中日关系中不可或缺的重要组成部分。

当前，随着中日关系及两国各自国情发生深刻变化，中日友城交流在面临复杂多变形势和新的课题的同时，也迎来新的发展机遇，呈现出新的特点。

2012 年4 月，首届中日省长知事论坛在东京召开。

新时期中日友城交流特点

中日友城交流覆盖面广、活跃度高、成果显著。截至目前，中日两国间共缔结友城250对，位列中国与世界各国缔结友城数量之最。我国除贵州、青海、西藏外，其他省、自治区和直辖市都有与日结好的城市，日本与中方结好城市则遍及所有47个都道府县。根据中国人民对外友好协会（以下简称“全国友协”）2013年面向中日友城的问卷调查结果显示，约52%的中方友城认为对日友城交流与其他国家友城相比更加活跃，30%认为基本相当。双方友城结合自身特点，在经贸、文化、教育、体育、观光、环保、医疗、养老、青少年等广泛领域开展多层次的友好交流与务实合作，有效推动了各自经济社会发展，造福了双方人民。

中日友城交流为两国关系改善发挥了先导作用。近年来，因为众所周知的原因，中日关系一度陷入两国邦交正常化以来最困难局面，双方各领域交流均受到不同程度负面影响。面临此情况，中日绝大多数友城间仍能保持交流合作。日本长野县、长崎县、北海道、东京都、静冈县、神奈川县、福冈县、鹿儿岛县、熊本县、香川县等多位知事及市长率团访华，中方多个省市的代表团亦应日方友城邀请访日。两国友城还积极参加由全国友协主办的中国国际友好城市大会、中日省长知事论坛、中日韩友好城市交流大会等地方机制性交流活动。地方交流以其民间性、务实性及延续性的特点，有效缓冲了中日紧张的政治气氛，成为中日关系“寒冬”中的一抹暖色。

2012 年8 月，中日友好交流城市初中生乒乓球友谊比赛大会在北京开幕。

中日友城交流日益趋向务实。中日友城交流日益趋向务实，由以往的人文交流为主，逐渐呈现出人文交流、经贸合作“双管齐下”的新特点。当前中国的新型城镇化建设和经济结构的转型升级，为中日地方政府的合作提供了广阔的空间。中日友城在很多领域存在着“契合点”，互补性强，合作潜力大。近年来，中方友城更加活跃地“走出去”。2015年至今，包括河北省、山东省、江苏省省长在内的中方近40批省级代表团访日，通过举办经贸洽谈会、旅游推介会等形式，与日方对口友城开展务实交流，就深化在奥运会、医疗养老、旅游观光、环境保护等领域的合作达成一系列协议，取得丰硕成果。日方友城也积极顺应时代发展变化，在“走出去”的同时，主动“请进来”，通过推广“MIJBC”（日本制造、中国品牌）等项目，吸引中方友城企业前往投资，吸引中国民众赴日观光，推动农、渔业产品对华出口。友城交流在实现中日合作双赢，普惠民众方面发挥了积极的示范作用。

中日友城交流合作平台

长期以来，全国友协与日本地方政府组织及多数都道府县地方自治体保持着密切往来，与日本自治体国际化协会、日本全国市长会和全国知事会等已成功搭建起推动中日友城交流合作的多个平台。1999年起，全国友协与日本自治体国际化协会及韩国市道知事协议会共同主办中日韩友好城市交流大会，迄今已成功举办了18届。大会每年在中日韩3国轮流举办，以友城交流合作为主线，寻求地方共同发展的新途径。

2012年4月，全国友协与日本全国知事会在中日省长知事定期互访机制的基础上，在东京举办了首届中日省长知事论坛。中方5位省级领导，日方10位知事、副知事参加论坛。期间签署合作协议，协议金额达2亿多美元。2014年10月，第二届中日省长知事论坛在北京举办，中方7位省级领导，日方6位知事、副知事参加。两国地方政府首脑就节能环保、旅游观光、新能源开发、青少年交流、产业合作等共同关心的话题深入交换意见，达成广泛共识。

全国友协与日本全国市长会交往历史悠久，早在1974年，全国友协就接待了第一个日本全国市长会代表团。自1980年起，全国友协与日本全国市长会定期组派市长代表团互访，迄今已各有13次中日市长代表团互访。通过互访，两国市长加深了对对方经济社会发展的全面、客观认识，增进了相互理解，为双方深化交流合作奠定了基础。

中日友城交流的展望

中日友城交流虽然成果显著，但也存在着一定的问题。根据全国友协2013年问卷调查结果显示，主要存在以下问题：中日友城交流“东强西弱”的局面没有得到根本改变。我国西部地区由于交通不便、资金缺乏、外语人才短缺等种种原因，对日交流少，有的即使签订了友城缔结协议，也难开展实质交流；由于友城结好数量总量趋于饱和，加上政治因素等原因，近年一些城市结好意愿不强；长期以来，通过中日双方的共同努力，两国友城间的各项交流机制已逐步建立，为增进双方相互理解，推动交流合作发挥了重要作用。另一方面，伴随中日友城合作需求的不断扩大，两国友城需要更广泛的交流沟通平台，以全面、及时掌握各种信息，充分整合优势资源，取长补短，增强友城交流合作的针对性和实效性。

为更好地推动中日友城工作的发展，我们应各自行动和集体合力，继续在以下方面努力：

加强民间和草根交流，厚植友谊。国之交在于民相亲。习近平主席去年5月出席中日友好交流大会时强调，中日友好的根基在民间，中日关系前途掌握在两国人民手里。当前，中日关系虽有一定改善，但改善势头仍很脆弱，面临一些复杂因素。友城交流作为中日关系的重要组成部分，具有面向基层、形式灵活多样等特点。因此，越是在两国关系困难的时候，越应充分发挥中日友城交流的特点和优势，大力开展两国基层交流，特别是要重点推进肩负两国友好未来的青少年交流，不断增进两国人民的相互理解，切实改善双方国民感情，培养两国友好的接班人，推动中日关系持续改善发展。

坚持互利共赢，打造中日友城交流新亮点。中日友城交流应坚持互利共赢，加强务实合作，不断扩大交流规模，提升交流层次，使友好交流动力源源不竭。要根据双方的现实需求，顺应国家发展方向和时代潮流，在节能环保、城市建设、旅游观光、社会福祉、防灾减灾等领域不断挖掘新的互补优势，打造新的交流亮点，以实现中日友城交流合作的长期可持续发展。

2009 年5 月，第十二次中日友好交流会议在日本香川县高松市举行。

丰富交流机制，团结各界力量，夯实合作基础。展望未来，今后中日双方应继续努力，构建多层次、宽领域、符合现实发展需要的交流合作机制，加强沟通，谋求共赢。中日地方政府也应充分认识到友城交往的重要性，积极发挥主导作用，团结各界力量，鼓励民间交往，建立企业、社会团体、文化艺术等多种形式的对口交流渠道，不断夯实扩大友城交往基础，实现全面合作和共同发展。

推动东西部友城的平衡发展,积极打造友城新的增长极。“一带一路”倡议为西部地区城市实现“走出去”提供了国际平台。新丝绸之路经济带东连亚太经济圈，西系发达的欧洲经济圈，被认为是“世界上最长、最具发展潜力的经济大走廊”。将友城结好与互联互通的区域合作结合，突出地域开放特色，拓展友城合作领域，实现区域经济和社会进步同步发展。

今后，全国友协将继续发挥中日友城交流的桥梁作用，与日本地方政府组织及各地方自治体一道，夯实双边平台，借助多边和国际合作平台，携手努力、开拓创新，推动两国友城交流与合作继续蓬勃发展，迈上新的台阶。

（全国友协日本工作部供稿、供图）

This year mark the 43th anniversary of the Sino-Japanese friendship cities exchange. On 24th, June, 1973, the ensuing year of the normalization of diplomatic relation of Sino-Japanese, Tianjin, China and Kobe, Japan established friendship cities. And China and Japan became the fi rst friendship cities between China and foreign countries. Since then, the Sino-Japanese friendship cities exchange opened a new chapter in prosperous development.

Over the past 40 years, as a major channel and platform for local exchanges between China and Japan, friendship cities exchange has made great progress in many fields. It not only plays a leading and exemplary role in local exchanges between China and other countries around the world, but also plays a special part in promoting the bilateral economic and social development, promoting the constant expansions of Sino-Japanese friendship and cooperation, deepening the friendship between the people in both countries and safeguarding the overall situation of Sino-Japanese friendship, which has become an indispensable and important part of Sino-Japanese relations.

At present, with the profound changes in Sino-Japanese relations and their respective national conditions, the Sino-Japanese friendship cities exchange also ushers a new development opportunity and presents new features while facing complex and ever-changing situation and new issues.

The Sino-Japanese Friendship Cities Exchange Features in the New Period

The Sino-Japanese friendship cities Exchange has wide coverage, high vitality and remarkable achievements.Up to now, there has established 250 pairs of friendship cities between China and Japan, ranking the most in quantity when comparing with the amount of friendship cities between China and other countries in the world. In China, apart from Guizhou, Qinghai and Tibet, other provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities all have friendship cities with Japan. And in Japan, the friendship cities with China spread all the 47 prefectures. According to the survey findings conducted by the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (hereinafter referred to as the "Chinese Friendship Association") in 2013 for the Sino-Japanese friendship city, about 52% of the Chinese friendship cities think that the exchange between China and Japan is more active than the exchange between China and other countries, and 30% of the Chinese friendship cities consider it almost equal. Combined with their own features, the bilateral friendship cities have carried out multi-layered friendship exchange and pragmatic cooperation in the wide range of fi elds, such as economy and trade, culture, education, sports, tourism, environmental protection, medical care, pension and youth, etc, promoting their respective economic and social development effectively.

The Sino-Japanese friendship city exchange have played a leading role in improving the relations between the two countries.In recent years, because of the well-known reasons, Sino-Japanese relations once fell into the most diffi cult situation since the normalization of diplomatic relations between the two countries, and the bilateral exchange in various fi elds was subject to different degrees of negative impact. Faced with this situation, the vast majority of Sino-Japanese friendship cities can still maintain exchange and cooperation. Many governors and mayors of Nagano-ken, Nagasaki-ken, Hokkaido, Tokyo, Shizuoka-ken, Kanagawa-ken, Fukuoka-ken, Kagoshima-ken, Kumamoto-ken and Kagawa-ken of Japan lead a delegation to visit China. And the delegations of many provinces of China also visit Japan at the invitation of Japanese friendship cities. The friendship cities of the two countries also take an active part in local institutional exchange activities, such as China International Friendship Cities Conference, Sino-Japanese Governor-General Governor Forum and Sino-Japan-Korea Friendship Cities Exchange Conference organized by the Chinese Friendship Association. With the features of folk nature, practicality, and continuity, local exchange has buffered the tension in the political atmosphere of China and Japan effectively, becoming a touch of warm color of Sino-Japanese relations in the "cold winter".

The Sino-Japanese friendship cities exchange becomes pragmatic increasingly.Based on the previous people-to-peopleexchange, the Sino-Japanese friendship cities exchange becomes pragmatic increasingly and emerges the new features of "two-pronged approach" of people-to-people exchange and economic and trade cooperation. At present, China's new urbanization construction and the transformation and upgrading of economic structure have provided a broad space for the cooperation of local governments in China and Japan. There exists “meeting point” in many fi elds for Sino-Japanese friendship cities. They have high complementarity and cooperation potential. In recent years, the Chinese friendship cities are more active in "going global". From 2015 till now, nearly 40 batches of provincial delegations, including the provincial governors from Hebei, Shandong and Jiangsu Provinces have visited Japan and conducted pragmatic exchanges with Japanese counterparts friendship cities through the form of holding economic and trade fairs and tourism promotion meetings, reaching a series of agreements on deepening the cooperation in the fields of Olympic games, medical care, tourism and environmental protection, which have made fruitful achievements. Conforming to the development and changes of the times actively and at the same time of "going global", Japanese friendship cities take the initiative of "please coming in" and promote the "MIJBC" (Made in Japan, Chinese brands) and other projects to attract the enterprises of Chinese friendship cities to invest and attract Chinese people to go sightseeing, promoting the exports of agriculture and fishery products to China. Friendship cities exchanges play a positive demonstration role in the realization of win-win situation in Sino-Japanese cooperation and wide privilege for the common people.

The Cooperation Platform of Sino - Japanese Friendship Cities Exchange

Over the years, the Chinese Friendship Association have maintained close contacts with the Japanese local government organizations and most of local autonomous and have successfully set up multiple platforms to promote Sino-Japanese friendship cities exchange and cooperation with the Japanese Autonomous Regional International Association, the National Mayor Meeting of Japan and the National Governors Meeting. Since 1999, the Chinese Friendship Association, the Japanese Autonomous Regional International Association and the Governor of South Korean National Association Agreement have jointly organized Sino-Japan-Korea Friendship Cities Exchange Conference, which has been successfully held for 18 sessions.

The General Assembly is held in turn in the three countries: China, Japan and South Korea, taking the exchange and cooperation of friendship cities as the main line, seeking the new approach of the common development of the three countries.

In April 2012, based on the regular exchange visits mechanism between the governor of Japan and China, the Chinese Friendship Association and the National Governors’ Association of Japan held the First Sino-Japanese Governor Forum in Tokyo. Five provincial leaders of China and 10 governors and deputy governors of Japan participated in the forum. During the forum, they sighed the cooperation agreements, which amounted to more than 200 million dollars. In October 2014, the Second Sino-Japanese Governor Forum was held in Beijing. And seven Chinese provincial leaders and six Japanese governors and deputy governors participated. The government leaders of the two countries exchanged views in depth on the topics of common interest such as energy conservation and environmental protection, tourism, new energy development, youth exchanges, and industrial cooperation, and reached broad consensus.

The Chinese Friendship Association has a long exchange history with the National Mayor Meeting of Japan. In the early 1974, the Chinese Friendship Association gave a reception of the fi rst delegation of the National Mayor Meeting of Japan. Since 1980, Chinese Friendship Association and National Mayor Meeting of Japan have arranged the delegation of mayors to have a regular visits. So far, 13 delegations of Chinese and Japanese mayors have visited each other. Through mutual visits, the mayors of the two countries deepened their overall and objective understanding of each other’s economic and social development and enhanced their mutual understanding, laying a foundation for deepening exchanges and cooperation.

Prospects of Sino - Japanese Friendship Cities Exchange

Although having gotten remarkable achievements, Sino-Japanese friendship cities exchange still has certain problems. The results of the questionnaire survey conducted by the Chinese Friendship Association in 2013 showed that: The situation of “strong east and weak west” in the Sino-Japanese friendship cities exchange was not fundamentally changed. Due to traffic inconvenience, lack of funds, the shortage of foreign language talent and other reasons, China's western region has less exchange with Japan. Even though some cities sighed the establishment agreement of friendship cities, it is diffi cult to carry out substantive exchanges.As the total quantity of friendship cities has turned into saturation, coupled with political factors, some cities don’t have high willingness to be tied in friendshipcities in recent years.For a long time, through the joint efforts of China and Japan, the various exchange mechanisms between the friendship cities of two countries have been established and played an important role in enhancing mutual understanding and promoting exchange and cooperation. On the other hand, with the unceasing expansion of demand for cooperation of Sino-Japanese friendship cities, these cities need a more extensive exchange platform, grasping all kinds of information comprehensively and timely, integrating the advantages of resources fully, learning from the strong points to offset the weakness and enhancing the pertinence and effectiveness of exchange and cooperation of friendship cities.

In order to promote the development of Sino-Japanese friendship cities better, we should, individually and collectively, continue to make efforts in the following areas:

Strengthen the exchange of folk and grassroots and enhance friendship.The relationship between countries is based on the affection of civilians in each country. Last May, President Xi attended Sino-Japanese Friendship Exchange Meeting and stressed that the foundation of Sino-Japanese friendship lied in the folk, and the future of Sino-Japanese relations lied in the hands of Chinese and Japanese. At present, Sino-Japanese relations have improved, but the momentum for improvement remains fragile and faces some complicated factors. As an important part of the Sino-Japanese relations, the friendship cities exchanges have the characteristics of being grassroots oriented and being flexible in form. Therefore, the more diffi cult the relationship between the two countries is, the more characteristics and advantages of Sino-Japanese friendship cities exchanges should be exerted fully. Carry out the grassroots and grass-roots exchanges energetically, especially focusing on promoting the exchanges of youth who bear the responsibility of friendship future between two countries. Enhance mutual understanding between Chinese and Japanese constantly, improve the national feelings of two countries practically, foster a friendly successor of the two countries, and promote the continuous improvement and development of Sino-Japanese relations.

Adhere to mutual benefit and win-win situation and create a new bright spot in the Sino-Japanese friendship.Sino-Japanese Friendship City exchanges should adhere to mutual benefi t and win-win situation, strengthen pragmatic cooperation, expand exchanges scale and elevate exchanges level constantly, making the impetus of friendship exchanges inexhaustible. In accordance with the actual demand of both sides and conforming to the direction of national development and the times trend, new complementary advantages should be excavated constantly and new exchange highlight should be created in the fi eld of energy conservation and environmental protection, urban construction, tourism, social welfare, prevention and conduction of natural disasters, achieving long-term sustainable development of Sino-Japanese exchanges and cooperation.

Enrich exchange mechanism, unite all walks of forces and consolidate cooperation foundation.Looking into the future, China and Japan should continue their efforts, establish the exchange and cooperation mechanism that is multi-level, wideranging and in line with the demand of realistic development, strengthen communication and seek win-win situation. The local governments of China and Japan should also fully understand the importance of the exchange of friendship cities, play a leading role actively in unifying all walks of force, encouraging non-governmental exchanges and establishing the counterpart exchange channels for business, social organizations and culture and art, and consolidate and expand the exchanges of friendship cities, achieving comprehensive cooperation and common development.

Promote the balanced development of the friendship cities in the east and west, and create a new growth pole of friendship cities actively."The Belt and Road" initiative provides an international platform for the realization of "going global" in the western regions and cities. Linking Asia-Pacific economic circle in the east and developed European economic circle in the west, the new Silk Road Economic Zone is considered as "the world's longest and most promising economic corridor." It combines the exchange of friendship cities with the interconnection of regional cooperation, highlights the characteristics of regional openness, expands the fields of friendship cities cooperation, achieving the development of regional economic and social progress simultaneously.

Henceforth, the Chinese Friendship Association will continue to play the bridge role in the exchange of Sino-Japanese friendship cities with local governments organization and local autonomous regions of Japan, consolidate bilateral platforms with the help of multilateral and international cooperation platform, work together and innovate, promoting the prosperous development in the exchange and cooperation of Sino-Japanese friendship cities into a new level.

（Provided by The Japanese Department of the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries）

The New Development of Sino-Japanese Friendship Cities Exchange and Construction in the New Era