The upcoming summit is set to discuss international production capacity cooperation, technological innovation, alignment of development initiatives, free trade talks and regional economic integration, among other topics.
The three sides will have an in-depth exchange of views, reach extensive consensus and push forward their cooperation towards higher levels, broader areas, larger scales and a more diversified and optimized structure, said Chinese Assistant Minister of Commerce Tong Daochi at a recent press briefing.
Following the summit, they are expected to release joint statements on cooperation in such areas as agriculture, trade and environment and make remarks on historical issues.
Noting that East Asia is now the most economically dynamic region in the world, but China-Japan-South Korea cooperation, a major engine of regional development, has been hindered by political and diplomatic issues, Woody Han, director of South Korea's JoongAng Ilbo China Institute, said he hopes the summit will restore the development vigor of East Asia.
In the eyes of Prof. Kumiko Haba of Japan's Aoyama Gakuin University, the meeting should serve as an opportunity to expand trilateral exchanges of scholars and the general public, which will form the biggest guarantee for peace and prosperity.
Atsushi Kouketsu, a deputy head of Japan's Yamaguchi University, urged the three countries to seize the momentum and regularize their leaders' meetings once again while committing themselves to foster friendly relations and prepare for the building of a EU-like Asian community of common destiny in the future.
ONUS ON JAPAN
Observers agree that Japan was to blame for the breakdown of the trilateral summitry, whose last session -- the fifth -- took place in Beijing in 2012.
In essence, it was the various problems caused by Tokyo's wrong approach to history that eventually led to the suspension, said Han, who also pointed to Japan's separate territorial disputes with China and South Korea.
Haba, who is a Ph.D. of international relations, attributed the hiatus to a serious aggravation of Japan's relations with China and South Korea prompted mainly by Tokyo's so-called "nationalization" of Diaoyu Islands and the rightward slide of the Abe administration.
She pointed out that in the wake of its highly controversial lifting of the ban on exercising collective self-defense, the Abe government has seen its popularity on the skids and thus, in order to arrest the decline, has to mend fences with Japan's neighbors.
The Japanese government, said Yazaki Mitsuharu, head of the secretariat of Japan-China Friendship Association, should from now on try to earn the trust of China and South Korea with right words and actions and roll out practical measures to promote regional cooperation.
He also called upon Tokyo to shift the focus of its foreign policy from the United States to East Asia and make concerted efforts with Beijing and Seoul to promote regional development and world peace.
Japan, he added, also needs to respond positively to such regional initiatives and visions as the Asian Infrastructure Invest Bank, the Belt and Road Initiative and the construction of a Northeast Asian community of common destiny.
