Senior Chinese official calls for enhanced trade, economic cooperation with EU

BEIJING, Dec. 29 (Xinhua) -- A senior official from China's Ministry of Commerce called for enhanced trade and economic cooperation between China and the European Union (EU), prior to Chinese Vice Premier Li Keqiang's upcoming visit to three EU nations.

In a recent interview with the People's Daily, Ministry of Commerce International Trade Representative Gao Hucheng reviewed the current trade and economic relationship between China and the EU, pinpointing the areas where more efforts could be made on both sides to further cooperation.

In an article published in Wednesday's People's Daily, Gao said that in the past 35 years since China and the EU forged diplomatic ties, the relations between the two sides went from "constructive partnership" to "comprehensive partnership" and the now "comprehensive strategic partnership."

The article was published about a week before Vice Premier Li sets out to visit Spain, Germany and Britain on Jan. 4-12.

Trade between China and the European Union has become one of the most active and influential bilateral relations in the world, said Gao.

Leaders of China and the European Union have been exchanging official visits frequently, said he. This year alone, seven of top Chinese leaders, including President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao, paid official visits to over a dozen EU countries.

Meanwhile, some 65 high-level delegations from the EU and its member states visited China in 2010.

Trade cooperation between China and the EU has been speeding up, Gao said. When China established diplomatic relations with the EU in 1975, annual trade was at 2.4 billion U.S. dollars, the volume of about two days between two sides this year. In the past 35 years, trade volume has grown over 150 times.

According to China's statistics, China-EU trade amounted to 433.9 billion U.S. dollars in the first 11 months of this year, up 33.1 percent from last year, a growth rate higher than that of China-Japan and China-U.S. trade.

According to statistics released by the EU, its exports to China rose 4 percent in 2009 despite the economic recession and decreased export to the rest of the world. EU's total investment in China has exceeded 70 billion U.S. dollars so far, making the EU China's third largest source of foreign investment.

Communication between people on two sides has grown substantially over the years. Nowadays nearly 200,000 Chinese students are studying in the EU countries and some 150,000 EU nationals are working in China. Over a million Chinese tourists travel to the EU countries every year.

Gao pointed out that as the largest developing country in the world with fast economic growth, China could forge complimentary economic ties with the EU, as they stand at different places in economic development.

On future economic policies, Gao said China was commited to expanding its domestic demand, adjusting its economic structure, and continuing its open-door policy, which is indispensable to China's development. He said the country's on-going economic reform offered great potential for investment and consumption, and gave other countries, including those in the EU, excellent business opportunities.

Gao encouraged politicians and entrepreneurs on both sides to take a more holistic view of China-EU economic and trade relations and cooperate more actively in many sectors of the economy.

The world economy is beginning a slow recovery, however, there are still many unstable and uncertain factors, Gao said, adding that China and the EU should continue to strengthen cooperation in the following aspects in a bid to deal with challenges more effectively.

First, the two sides need to be more open to each other to promote trade and investment.

Gao urged the two sides to implement as soon as possible the consensus reached during the meetings between the Chinese and European leaders as well as the China-EU high level economic and trade dialogues.

He said that China and the EU should take the lead against protectionism, continue to open markets to each other, promote trade and investment liberalization and facilitation, and promote the process of Doha round negotiation.

Secondly, China and the EU should address each other's concerns and strengthen dialogue and consultation. China, which understands the EU's concerns on trade unbalance, intellectual property rights and RMB exchange rate, has taken pro-active measures such as organizing procurement teams to the bloc, according to Gao.

Gao noted that China's Ministry of Commerce had organized 10 procurement teams to the EU since early this year to promote bilateral trade and investment, signing 192 agreements worth more than 48 billion U.S. dollars.

Meanwhile, he urged the EU to understand the importance and urgency of addressing some of China's concerns, such as easing high-tech export restrictions and recognition of China's full market economy status, saying the EU should take a more active and pragmatic approach to those issues.

Gao said the current international financial crisis should awaken the Western community to this fact: The market economy should be an economy of different stages, different types, and a diverse nature.

The EU should change the approach of judging China's market economic status simply from the technical standard and angle, he said, stressing that the EU should neither apply double standards on China, nor implement discriminatory measures on the Chinese enterprises.

Thirdly, the two sides need to give full play to their respective advantages to expand exchanges and cooperation. The two economies are highly complementary thus having a great cooperation potential, Gao said.

They should strengthen cooperation in such fields as high-tech industries, emerging industries with strategic significance, commercial service, and energy saving and environmental protection in a bid to create more commercial opportunities and contribute more to the economic revitalization of China and the EU as well as the world economic recovery, he said.

Fourthly, the two sides need to attach importance to cooperation between their small- and medium-sized enterprises, which is a potential growth point area, Gao said.

Meanwhile, Gao also said China was full of sincerity and confidence in its trade and economic cooperation with the EU.

A nation can prosper only if it adopts an open and inclusive development approach, which has been proved repeatedly by history, he said, adding that China was ready to strengthen communication and cooperation with the EU within major multilateral mechanisms such as the Group of 20 (G20) to jointly address such global challenges as climate change, energy security and non-traditional security threat.

A unified, prosperous and strong Europe is conducive to the world stability and development, he added.

Gao said he believed Vice Premier Li's upcoming visit to Spain, Germany and Britain in early 2011 would boost confidence in trade and investment cooperation of the business communities of the two sides, and push forward the sound development of China-EU trade and economic relations.