From September 27 to 28, at the invitation of Mitsubishi Corporation, Minmetals Chairman and Leading Party Group Secretary He Wenbo leaded a delegation to Japan for strategic and business exchanges with Mitsubishi Corporation. Minmetals Chief Accountant and Party Member Shen Ling; Ken Kobayashi, Chairman of the Board of Mitsubishi Corporation; President and CEO Takehiko Kakiuchi; Kanji Nishiura, Senior Executive Officer and CEO of Group CEO, Metals Group; and Shunichi Matsui, President and Regional CEO, East Asia; were present at the events.

Minmetals and Mitsubishi Corporation have always maintained good relations of cooperation in business exchanges. The two companies not only share the same concept of trade-based development and the process of growth transition from investment mergers and acquisitions to resource business, but also face the same challenge due to the prolonged market downturn of the world metal and mining industry. The exchanges focused on such topics as the macroeconomic situation, the strategic planning of Mitsubishi Corporation, the business planning strategy of Mitsubishi Corporation, trends of the markets of steel products and raw materials, industry and financial integration, and joint development of third-party markets. The seminar has enhanced the mutual strategic understanding between the two sides. It has also strengthened their consensus in terms of training core talent teams, promoting the core business strategic focus and the allocation of a diversity of assets, continuously optimizing asset quality, throughout the life cycle of the industry, transiting from industrial investment to industrial management, exploring the global market, and strengthening corporate governance structure optimization. They pledged to work together to develop third-party markets and continue to promote bilateral strategic and business exchanges through enhancing cooperation and giving full play to their advantages. They also initially determined the theme and location of the next seminar.

During his visit, He Wenbo also met Mr. Mikio Sasaki, former President of Mitsubishi Corporation, Japanese Chairman of the Japan-Chile Business Cooperation Committee, and Special Adviser of Mitsubishi Corporation, and Yorihiko Kojima, former President and current Honorary President of Mitsubishi Corporation. They reviewed the course of cooperation between Minmetals, Baosteel Group and Mitsubishi Corporation.

On September 28, accompanied by Shunichi Matsui, Kosaku Kawai Man Jiang, and other personnel from Mitsubishi Corporation, He Wenbo and his delegation paid a visit to e-Factory, a demonstration plant of Mitsubishi Electric Nagoya Works. The delegation expressed their admiration for the achievements of Mitsubishi Electric in constantly optimizing the workflow and layout of the workshop through equipment operational data and in enhancing lean manufacturing efficiency and flexibility manufacturing capacity in factory automation as well as a series of shock absorption measures for buildings.

Mitsuyuki Takada, Katsuhiro Ito, Tetsuji Nakagawa, Tsutomu Takanose and other personnel from Mitsubishi Corporation; as well as Ren Zhufeng, Xiao Xuewen, Liu Qingchun, Zhang Ye, Xiao Peng, Peng Bugang, Zhang Kaifu and other personnel from Minmetals attended the events.