China and Japan must avoid falling into a "zero-sum game trap" and instead become cooperative partners, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Wednesday amid rising economic and security tensions between the United States and China.

In a video message to a forum attended by experts on the Asian countries, Wang also apparently urged Japan, a close U.S. security ally, not to lend a hand to Washington's perceived attempt to decouple China from the global economy.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (on screen) delivers a video message to a forum on Sino-Japanese relations, as pictured in Tokyo on Dec. 7, 2022. (Kyodo)

Emphasizing that the two nations are "forever neighbors," Beijing and Tokyo should be "vigilant for malicious disturbances" to "Sino-Japanese economic and trade relations," Wang said.

"We should treat each other with consideration and sincerity. We must not get involved in a confrontation between camps, nor caught in a zero-sum game trap," Wang said in the almost-eight-minute message.

On Wednesday, Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi also sent a video message to the two-day symposium, organized by Japanese nonprofit think tank Genron NPO and the China International Communications Group.

For two years through 2021, the annual forum, which had started in 2005, took place online against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic that began in early 2020.


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