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Japan after WWII, and post-reform China, have followed an export-led approach to their economic growth, though they faced different challenges in the price bubble burst of the 1990s, and the global financial crisis in 2008, respectively. This paper evaluates the competitive trade strategies they followed in their export-led model. Their strategies have included a number of policies, both similar and dissimilar, that have conditioned the competition, composition and direction of trade. For Japan, the competitiveness of trade strategy was created by the government-directed indicative planning, promotion of selective industries, use of exchange rate and ODA for trade, protection of domestic businesses, etc. As part of the strategy, Japan controlled imports and inward investments and shunned integration through trading arrangements to minimize external competition. China has, on its part, followed a set of policies that encouraged foreign investment through various incentives in the labor-intensive, processing and trading industries to combine with its competitive edges in land and labor. Like Japan, China also manipulated the exchange rate and distributed ODA to favor exports. At the same time, like Japan, it refrained from any serious FTA engagement to expand trade. Keywords: China, exchange rate, incentives, investment, Japan, trade strategies