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Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Nazef said on Monday his country could maintain the momentum of economic growth and secure local and foreign investments through step-by-step reforms, despite the unfolding global economic crisis.

Addressing a conference organized by the Economist Intelligence Unit, a British think tank, and the Egyptian government, Nazef said Egypt could ride out the crisis through incremental two-stage reforms, though the tourism sector, exports and Suez Canal revenues are hit hard by the economic slowdown.

“Thanks to financial and banking policies adopted by the Central Bank of Egypt, the country managed to overcome the first wave of the fallout of the financial crisis,” he was quoted by the official MENA news agency.

The first stage of the reconstruction of the financial and banking sectors has been accomplished, he said, adding that the second stage will help fund the small- and medium-sized enterprises, which, according to official statistics, absorb 95 percent of labors after years of privatization.

“Confidence in Egyptian economy encourages businessmen to pump more investments into Egypt,” he added.

The government had refrained from cutting the benchmark interest rates despite worldwide slashes in the past five months, in a bid to cool down the sizzling inflation and buttress the local currency.

“The major challenge besetting us is soliciting jobs,” he said, referring to the high unemployment rate in the most populous Arab country, where, according to the World Bank, 22 percent of labors are jobless.

On Saturday, Egyptian Economic Development Minister Osman Mohamed Osman said the economic growth rate decreased to 4.1 percent in the second quarter of the 2008-2009 fiscal year, against 7.7 percent in the same period in the previous year, which reflects a tangible recession in key sectors.

Osman expected that Egypt’s economic growth rate, recorded more than 7 percent in the past three fiscal years, will decrease to about 5 percent by the end of the current fiscal year (from July 1,2008, to June 30, 2009).

The Egyptian authorities have been taking necessary measures to curb the negative impact of the global financial crisis to the country’s economy.

Due to a recent plunge of inflation rate, the Central Bank of Egypt said Friday that it has decided to cut its key overnight interest rates by 1 percent to 10.5 percent for deposits and 12.5 for lending in a bid to boost the economic growth of the country.

As commodity prices ebbed worldwide, Egypt’s inflation rate was down to 14 percent in January, the lowest one since last April, compared with 18.7 percent in December, the country’s Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics said Tuesday.

Late Blight–the fungus that caused the Irish Potato Famine in the 1840s–has been hitting hard tomato plants in the eastern United States.

Late Blight occurs sporadically in the Northeast U.S., but this year’s outbreak is more severe as infected plants have been widely distributed by big-box retail stores and rainy weather has hastened the spores’ airborne spread.

Agricultural experts recommend that anyone buying tomato seedlings for planting in their home garden, should check them for signs of a deadly disease that also affects potato plants.

The blight causes dark, quarter-sized lesions, edged by white fungus, on tomato leaves and a dark, greasy lesion on fruit. The fungus creates spores that are released and can travel on the wind for several miles to infect other plants.

The spread of the blight has been exacerbated by heavy rainfall and cool temperatures last month, which the National Weather Service said was the eighth-wettest and 19th-coolest June on record.

“With this weather pattern that we are in, the conditions are unbelievably favorable for the spread of the disease,” said Robert Hadad, regional vegetable specialist of Cornell Cooperative Extension. “The potential for this disease is to be really widespread.”

Sitting on a cardboard box outside the customs building in Dandong, a major city in northeast China’s Liaoning province, Xu shielded her eyes from the scorching midday sun and sighed.

She had been staring across the border to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) for hours, hoping for the sight of an oncoming truck.

Xu is a smuggler. For the past seven years, she has fed her family by helping clients sneak food, clothing and various other basic supplies across the border to the DPRK, the land of her birth.

It is a small operation and one of the many that exploit the city’s position as a main point of trade between China and its reclusive neighbor, which over the years has relied heavily on the relationship to survive.

Dandong and its people, however, have been one of the worst casualties of the tension that has arisen between the two nations following the DPRK’s decision to again test its nuclear might on May 25.

“Business used to be very good but we have suffered a lot recently because of a serious decline in trade,” explained Xu, who is in her 40s and refused to give her full name due to the sensitivity of her profession.

Xu, along with her husband and son, were able to flee the DPRK in 1990 after telling officials they planned to visit relatives in Dandong. They have never returned and, as the couple were both children of overseas Chinese, they successfully applied for permanent residential permits after five years.

On an average day, Xu would receive a call from a client in the DPRK with a list of items, from washing powder to television sets. She would then buy the goods and liaises with DPRK truck drivers, who concealed the contraband cargo before heading back across the border, marked by the Yalu River and 66-year-old “Grand Bridge of Sino-DPRK Friendship”.

“Last year, I earned 100,000 yuan ($15,000),” said Xu, boasting a figure more than 10 times the official average income of an urban Dandong resident. “But fewer and fewer trucks are coming to China. Now I make just 213 yuan a day and only made 20,000 yuan during the first half of this year.”

Xu’s story is just the tip of the iceberg, according to Dandong Federal Business Corp Chairman Shan Jie, who said: “Most of the nearly 1,000 legal enterprises involved in border trade here have stopped operations.”

Shan, who has run the corporation for 16 years, said he has forged close relations with officials in Pyongyang, the capital of the DPRK, with turnover hitting a peak of $6 million in 2000.

“Political events like the first nuclear test back in 2006 had limited impact on our company,” he said. “But our business has hit rock bottom since the May test. We agreed 17 deals worth 3 million yuan with Pyongyang in April, but so far only one of them has materialized.

“We are under a great deal of pressure, but at least we have one deal going. Many other firms have no deals, no income and are desperate.”

Xu Ziyun, who works for Hantong International Forwarding Agent, one of the largest trading companies in Dandong, agreed that the amount of cargo crossing the border was shrinking fast.

“Before the nuclear test in May, more than 100 trucks were checked by Chinese customs officers every day. At the peak, our company alone sent 129 vehicles to the DPRK daily. But now only about 30 trucks from each side are crossing,” he said.

The fate of Dandong has for decades been inextricably linked with its mysterious neighbor. In 1950, when the city was called Andong, it became a household name when the Chinese army of volunteers marched across the bridge over the Yalu River to fight in the Korean War.

The many Chinese parents who named their children Andong assured its place in history, while today China’s northernmost port city is where more than half of all Sino-DPRK trade is conducted.

International trade became the city’s economic pillar in the 1990s following the collapse of light industry amid the reform of the State-owned enterprises. Transactions with the DPRK accounted for 80 percent of its foreign trade last year, said the Dandong Customs Bureau.

“Dandong’s trade with Japan and Republic of Korea (ROK) has also been severely hit by the financial crisis,” said Shan. “If the situation continues, the city will be trapped in the mire.”

In Yanji, a city further north along the border in the neighboring province of Jilin, the economic climate is also gloomy. A local businessman was quoted in the Los Angeles Times last month as saying this year had been the hardest of his 10-year career trading with the DPRK.

Recent figures from the Ministry of Commerce showed China’s trade with the reclusive nation had surged 40 percent from $192 million in May to $269 million in June. However, Zhang Baoren, an expert on the Korean Peninsula economy with Jilin University, said the figures covered various kinds of trade, including Beijing’s aid to Pyongyang, and did not reflect the real picture of the situation in border cities.

Dandong’s foreign trade authorities declined to offer statistics for local dealings with the DPRK.

“China controls the lifeline to the DPRK as 90 percent of crude oil and 80 percent of commodities there come from China,” said an article in Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper recently, while media in ROK reported that Pyongyang’s reliance on trade with Beijing increased from 32 percent in 2003 to 73 percent last year, largely due to a deterioration in relations between the DPRK and Seoul after the hardline Lee Myung-bak administration took power.

This has left some analysts scratching their heads over the subsequent drop off in trade with China, with some blaming the nuclear test and 18 missile launches it has carried out since April, which military staff in the ROK estimated cost their northern neighbors a cool $700 million.

Dandong businessman Shan disagreed. According to the United States’ Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, the DPRK’s gross domestic product stands at $17 billion. The White House has also claimed Pyongyang has raised funds by selling nuclear technology abroad, although there are no exact figures for the alleged deals.

“The DPRK can afford $700 million,” said Shan. “The DPRK is saving money for extreme circumstances, such as a war or domestic turmoil, given the huge pressure exerted by the international community, the unstable health of the nation’s leader Kim Jong-il and a possible power transfer, maybe to his third son Kim Jong-un.

“These complex factors have made Pyongyang more cautious with its money compared to after the 2006 nuclear test,” he said.

The Los Angeles Times reported on July 5 that the DPRK was taking a “great leap backward” to restrict its commodities economy, which it has been developing for the past decade. It said some items of food, clothing and even pharmaceuticals imported from China were banned in its markets, with local traders now stocking only 35 percent of the merchandise previously available.

Liu Jiangyong, one of China’s leading experts on Northeast Asian studies with Tsinghua University in Beijing, however, believes the opposite is true and said the DPRK was actually looking to boost its commercial economy.

“The nation’s first television commercial, one for Taedong Beer, was broadcast on July 3 and is as a signal they want to follow China’s way of economic reform,” he said. “The reduction in trade is largely due to the tight control Pyongyang has placed on its border with China since May.”

Liu said reasons behind the tightened border controls are the uncertainty surrounding the DPRK’s political situation, which has been exacerbated by Kim Jong-il’s suspected ill health and fears of information leakage.

“In this unstable political situation, the DPRK leadership wants to consolidate its domestic political control, keeping a tight lid on contact with foreign countries and people,” said Yongwook Ryu, a ROK-born Northeast Asian studies specialist with Harvard University in the US. “Politics comes before economics in the DPRK right now, and they will do things even if doing so would hurt their economy.”

Many businessmen and women involved in DPRK trade in Dandong told China Daily they were pessimistic about the future, but Shan insisted he was upbeat.

“I’m a native of Dandong and, based on my experience, the strained situation will last for no more than three months,” he said. “And, to tell you the truth, as border merchants we don’t fear war, which will bring even greater opportunities.

“What does concern me is the domestic situation over there. The power shift will definitely affect trade.”

He is not alone in his fears and experts have suggested there is now a subtle balance between legitimate trade and smuggling in the border cities.

“Keeping the trade flowing between the duo is the only choice for the DPRK,” said Lu Chao, director of DPRK study center of Liaoning Provincial Academy of Social Sciences. “It is a basic prerequisite to develop and participate in world trade.”

Ryu at Havard University added: “Both countries see lots of benefit in bilateral trade but the speed of the resumption depends on how fast it takes for the DPRK regime to become politically stable. If they feel they have a firm grip on power, and if the leadership issue is settled, then they will start engaging with the outside world strategically as before.”

Get out the fake soul patches and bandannas. Apolo Anton Ohno is going back to the Olympics.

Ohno earned a trip to his third Winter Games, winning the 500 and 1,000 meters at the U.S. short track national championships Saturday night when crashes sent two skaters to the hospital.

Ohno, the injured J.R. Celski, Jordan Malone, Travis Jayner and Simon Cho earned spots on the men’s Olympic team. Ohno finished first in the overall standings with 6,912 points.

“It feels really good,” said Ohno, who realized his longtime goal of competing in the Vancouver Games, about three hours from his hometown of Seattle. “We have a very, very strong team.”

Now 27, the five-time Olympic medalist known for the wisp of hair under his chin barely got his right skate blade in front of Jeff Simon in the 500 final at the hockey rink on the Northern Michigan University campus.

Ohno was timed in 41.928, with Simon crossing the line in 41.967. Jayner was third and Malone fourth.

Ohno returned later to win the 1,000 with an inside pass that overtook Anthony Lobello Jr. on the straightaway of the final lap. Ohno waved his right index finger in the air, signaling No. 1, even before crossing the final line. He was clocked in 1:33.306.

Simon was second, barely edging out Lobello. Cho was fourth.

Celski underwent surgery after crashing and slicing open his left leg with his right skate blade in a 500 meter semifinal heat.

He hit the boards coming out of a turn and bounced off them. The first few inches of his right blade cut into his left leg near the knee, spilling blood on the ice.

Celski yelled as fellow skater Walter Rusk, who didn’t qualify to compete, jumped out of the stands and rushed to Celski’s side to apply pressure to try and stop the heavy blood flow. The race was cut off while he was tended to for several minutes before being removed on a stretcher.

U.S. Speedskating president Brad Goskowicz said Celski was undergoing surgery at Marquette General Hospital to determine the extent of his injury.

Ohno texted with Celski after the crash.

“He sounded like he was OK and in good spirits,” he said. “I’ve heard it’s not as bad as it looked on the ice. He’s one of our guys, he’s skating amazing. I’m sure J.R. will be back very soon. He’s a strong kid.”

Simon hit the boards skates-first earlier in the heat, but he wasn’t hurt. Lobello, a 2006 Olympian, was disqualified for impeding Simon.

Celski, a 19-year-old skater from Federal Way, Wash., finished second behind Ohno in the overall standings despite the crash.

He won the 1,500 earlier in the meet.

Celski was the second skater taken off by stretcher on the meet’s final night. Maria Garcia, a 2006 Olympian from Carson, Calif., crashed hard into the boards in her 500 semifinal heat, forcing the race to be stopped.

Garcia was taken to the same hospital as Celski and was being evaluated, Goskowicz said. There was no immediate update on her condition.

Katherine Reutter won the women’s 500 final in 44.303, beating out Allyson Dudek.

Reutter returned later to lead the 1,000 meters much of the way, but she was beaten to the finish line by 2006 Olympian Kimberly Derrick.

Derrick won in 1:32.096. Reutter got her left skate across ahead of Allison Baver, who finished third. Dudek was fourth.

Reutter, Dudek, Derrick, Baver and Lara Gehring earned spots on the women’s Olympic team. Reutter led the point standings with 6,952.

Four years ago, Reutter didn’t qualify for the trials.

“To come back four years later, I didn’t mess up and nothing held me back,” she said. “I was able to do my best and this time was good enough.”

Baver made her third Olympic team just seven months after shattering her lower right leg in a racing crash.

“So much has happened to me in the last seven months, so many mountains to climb every day. I did it and it’s cool,” she said. “This is the best team we’ve ever had on the ladies’ side.”

Bridges are not just for crossing rivers in Pingnan, they are icons of the little-known county in northeast Fujian province.

Locals claim that Pingnan was once home to more than 100 of these distinctive wooden bridges that were recognized by UNESCO in September as an intangible cultural heritage.

Currently, there are just 15 of the bridges, two of which have just been rebuilt. The 1,000-year-old Wan’an Bridge is the oldest and the longest wooden bridge in the country, measuring 98.2 m.

The other remaining bridges have been renovated and still play a significant role in village life. Every day you can see streams of villagers pouring across, tools in hand.

When they have leisure time they chat or play chess on the bridges, while their buffaloes chew grass on the river’s bank. On summer nights, some villagers sleep on the bridges because it is cool and free of annoying mosquitoes.

Bridges here are often connected with religion and there is a local saying that: “Where there is a bridge, there is a temple.”

It is usually located at one end of the bridge and has either Buddhist or Taoist gods, but some villagers worship gods originating from local folktales.

In a temple next to Wan’an Bridge, for example, there is a statue of the Monkey King, the main character from the classical Chinese novel Journey to the West.

There are also some shrines on the bridge, but believers have to be careful when they burn incense as several bridges have burned down.

The most recent fire was in June 2006 when Baixiang Bridge, which dated back to the Song Dynasty (960-1279), was destroyed. The local government is considering rebuilding it.

Built without a single piece of metal it takes several months to build a bridge. First, a feng shui master will choose the location. It is said that bridges built upstream of a settlement help repel evil, while those built downstream will help accumulate wealth.

Ancient Chinese people believed gods exist everywhere in wild nature, so before they cut down trees to build their bridges they would offer sacrifices to the gods of the mountain or forests.

Construction usually started in autumn, when water levels are low and before starting work, the river gods were propitiated.

When a bridge is completed a ceremony is held and the workers sing together. After the ceremony, a local villager who is recognized for having good luck is asked to cross the bridge first, in order to bring good fortune to everyone.

The person in charge of construction is called “main rope” while his assistant is the “assisting rope”. They are the only ones to have their names printed on the bridge’s main beam.

Huang Chuncai, 74, is the youngest “main rope” in Pingnan. Both his father and grandfather were “main ropes”. He learned the skill from his father when he was 15 and became a “main rope” in his 20s.

Huang built his last bridge in 1969 and after that wooden bridges were gradually replaced by concrete ones.

In 2005, however, Huang was brought out of retirement when the local government relocated a wooden bridge built in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). He has been engaged in various renovation projects since then.

Huang is passing down his skills to his two sons.

Traditionally, the knowledge can only be passed down to male family members, but Huang is keen to move with the times and is willing to teach anyone who is willing to learn the trade.

The tiny Pacific nation of Palau is creating the world’s first shark sanctuary, a biological hotspot to protect great hammerheads, leopard sharks, oceanic whitetip sharks and more than 130 other species fighting extinction in the Pacific Ocean.

But with only one boat to patrol 240,000 square miles (621,600 square kilometers) of Palau’s newly protected waters — including its exclusive economic zone, or EEZ, that extends 200 miles (320 kilometers) from its coastline — enforcement of the new measure could be almost like swimming against the tide.

Palau’s president, who is to announce the news to the United Nations General Assembly on Friday, acknowledges the difficulty of patrolling ocean waters nearly the size of Texas or France with a single boat. But he hopes others will respect Palauan territorial waters — and that the shark haven inspires more such conservation efforts globally.

“Palau will declare its territorial waters and extended economic zone to be the first officially recognized sanctuary for sharks,” Palauan President Johnson Toribiong told the Associated Press in an interview Thursday.

Shark fishing has grown rapidly since the mid-1980s, driven by a rising demand — mainly in China — for shark fin soup, a highly prized symbol of wealth. Because of their long life spans and low fertility rates, sharks are vulnerable to overfishing.

Within its EEZ, a nation may regulate fisheries and scientific research and develop other economic efforts. The U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization estimates more than half of highly migratory sharks are overexploited or depleted.

Toribiong said a recent flyover by Australian aircraft showed more than 70 vessels fishing Palau’s waters, many of them illegally.

“We’ll do the very best we can, given our resources,” he said. “The purpose of this is to call attention to the world to the killing of sharks for commercial purposes, including to get the fins to make shark fin soups, and then they throw the bodies in the water.”

Tourists go to Palau for its spectacular diving in the tropical waters, dramatic coral and rich marine life. The remote Pacific nation recently made global headlines when it agreed to President Barack Obama’s request to take a group of Uighurs — Turkic Muslims from China’s far western Xinjiang region — as part of plans to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center.

Palau is one of the world’s smallest countries, with some 20,000 people scattered over 190-square mile (490-square kilometer) archipelago of lush tropical landscapes in the Western Pacific.

Its shark sanctuary will shelter more than 135 Western Pacific species of sharks and rays considered endangered or vulnerable, or for which there is not enough data to determine how the species is faring.

“Palau has basically raised the bar for the rest of the world for shark conservation,” said Matt Rand, director for global shark conservation for Washington-based Pew Environment Group, an advocacy organization.

Elsewhere, Europe is trying to crack down on shark fishing in its waters.

In February, the European Commission proposed its first-ever shark conservation rules for European waters. EU countries account for a third of shark meat exports globally, and shark steaks are increasingly served in restaurants, replacing pricier swordfish steaks, and shark products are also finding their way into lotions and leather sports shoes.

Toribiong said he also will call for a global moratorium on “shark finning” — the practice of hacking off shark fins and throwing the body back into the sea — and an end to unregulated and destructive bottom trawling on the high seas.

Palau is among 20 seafaring nations that already have voluntary agreed to end bottom trawling, which involves fishing boats that drag giant nets along the sea floor.

Enormously effective at catching fish, the nets from bottom trawling also wipe out almost everything in their path, smash coral and stir clouds of sediment that smother sea life, marine experts say.

The U.N. has called bottom trawling a danger to unique and unexplored ecological systems and said slightly more than half the underwater mountain and coral ecosystems in the world can be found beyond the protection of national boundaries.

Guests participating in the seventh Shanghai World Expo International Forum said their countries are actively preparing for the upcoming Expo 2010, and revealed some of their ideas to Xinhuanet.

Canada’s Expo 2010 Commissioner General Mark Rowswell, commonly known as “Da Shan” in China, said based on the experience of the previous Expos, Canada puts a lot of efforts on the Expo 2010.

“Not to boast myself, but the cooperation between Cirque du Soleil and me would be a feature in the Canada pavilion,” the Chinese crosstalk star talked in fluent Chinese, “we will use our extraordinary imagination to embody our theme, a theme of the ‘vigorous city’.”

“After its open-up, I believe the Canada pavilion will be one of the most popular pavilions in the park,” he added.

But Rowswell declined to talk further on the details inside the pavilion, joking “if we reveal this too early, there will be many countries imitating us.”

Iceland Embassy representative Jon Trausti Saemundsson told Xinhuanet that since they come from Iceland, they are creating the Iceland pavilion like an ice cube.

“People coming to visit the pavilion will be transferred into the ice cube,” he said, “so people come in will come into an area that they can smell the nature of Iceland.”

Saemundsso said they will cool down the area, so people will feel the chilling. And on the visitors’ way out, they will be given ice water, which are imported from Iceland.

“So visitors will be walking in the Shanghai Expo park with the ice from Iceland,” he said.

Commissioner General of Norway for Expo 2010 Arild Blixrud said they will show harmony of the nature in their pavilion.

“We will build up a pavilion in wood, not steel. So when people come to our pavilion, they can touch the nature,” he said, “we want to remind them, keeping a good contact with nature will make a society a good place for living.”

“The United Nations has declared Norway as a very good country for living for sixth consecutive year, and we want to tell people why it is so,” said he.

The Jamaica representative said in the exhibition in the Caribbean pavilion, there will be a traditional beverage displayed. Besides, some of the world’s top athletes from Jamaica will be invited to the pavilion to join the activities with the visitors.

Thursday marked the 170 days countdown to the opening of 2010 Shanghai World Expo. According to the Shanghai organizer, constructions of most pavilions have been started in the Expo park, which is expected to see some 70 million visitors in the 184 exhibition days.

The use of plastic shopping bags at supermarkets and retail chains in Hong Kong dropped by as much as 80 percent since an environmental levy was imposed a month ago, a local retailer association has said.

The number of those who visited stores with shopping bags of their own also increased by 67 percent, local newspapers reported Saturday.

Nevertheless, a survey also showed that 58 percent of stores and business owners complained of falling turnover on Fridays and weekends, said Caroline Mak, chairperson of the Hong Kong Retail Management Association.

It takes time for the local residents to get used to the levy. Authorities will conduct a review of the environmental levy, said Edward Yau, secretary for the Environment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government.

Hong Kong launched the environmental levy scheme on plastic bags on July 7, requiring registered retailers to charge half a HK dollar for each plastic shopping bag provided to customers.

Small and thin plastic producers in Myanmar’s commercial city of Yangon have been ordered to stop their production by the end of next month to pave way for creating a thin-plastic-bag-free city and bring about a clean environment, said sources with the Yangon City Development Committee Friday.

The ultimatum was set for Nov. 30 for the close-down of such business in the former capital.

There is a total of 146 plastic industries in Yangon and disposal of used plastic bags in the city amounted to 200 tons per day, the sources said.

Plastic bag production in Myanmar has dropped by half this year after the authorities banned using small and thin plastic bags in the first three cities of Mandalay, Bagan and Nay Pyi Taw starting four months ago due to environmental impact reason, according to a market survey.

The import of raw material for producing plastic bags has also decreased, merchants said.

The authorities have urged the public to re-use paper bag, cloth bag, banana leaf and tree leaf instead in packing things or food.

The program of creating plastic-free zones is also being extended to Myitgyina and Sagaing in northwestern part of the country, reports said.

Plastic production has been banned in Mandalay since 2004 and the prohibition on use of small and thin plastic bags in daily life followed in June this year.

As part of its measures, the Mandalay municipal authorities seized and destroyed a total of 321 kilogram of plastic bags from five townships in the city then.

Myanmar people have been widely and traditionally using small and thin plastic bags for packing things and even food in markets and restaurants as well as packing rubbish for throwing, building up a large amount of garbage daily for disposal.

Although the ban has not affected Yangon, the Yangon municipal authorities has launched a program of collecting disposed plastic bags in the city and re-using them in production of plastic pipes as part of its bid in environment conservation.

The Fourth Beijing-Tokyo Forum proposed Wednesday that the future of Asia should be closely watched.

“The forum should not only discuss the issues concerning China-Japan relations, but show sufficient concern for the future of Asia”, said a joint statement released at the plenary meeting towards the conclusion of the forum.

The subject of Asia’s future, which has been brought forward this time, will be fully discussed at the next forum to be held in Beijing, it said.

The co-sponsors of the forum have reached a consensus that the Beijing-Tokyo Forum, now being held for the exchange of views and ideas on bilateral ties, should be developed into an Asia- and world-oriented dialogue platform, said the statement, calling on both sides to strive for this goal.

Prior to the release of the statement, Liu Hongcai, deputy chief of the International Liaison Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee delivered a speech at the plenary meeting after talking to members of Japan’s major political parties during the forum.

He said personages from Japan’s political parties are of the opinion that whatever Japan’s political situation turns, the general trend of China-Japan strategic and mutually beneficial relations will not be reversed.

“Whoever becomes Japan’s prime minister, the strategic and mutually beneficial relations between China and Japan must persist,” said Liu.

“This has basically become the consensus among the populace as well as Japanese government leaders and politicians,” he said.

The Fourth Beijing-Tokyo Forum closed at midday Wednesday. The gathering, which opened with a dinner party late Monday, had two plenary meetings and seven panel dialogues during the following two day’s official sessions.

Present at the three-day forum are some 110 personages from various circles of both countries.

The annual forum, co-sponsored by the China Daily and the non-profit Japanese organization Genron NPO, is held alternately in Beijing and Tokyo. The first Beijing-Tokyo Forum took place in Beijing in August 2005.