| Commerce minister Chen Deming delivers a speech to the UK-China Business Summit |
|
| Wednesday,January 23,2008 Posted: 17:50 BJT(0950 GMT) |
| From:英国商务处 Article type:Translated |
On 18 January 2008, Minister of Commerce Chen Deming was present at the UK-China Business Summit and delivered a speech.
In his speech, Chen said the China-UK relationship has developed smoothly and their economic and trade cooperation has achieved fruitful results under the active promotion of leaders of both countries since the establishment of their diplomatic relations 36 years ago. The China-UK trade volume had amounted to 39.4 billion U.S. dollars by 2007. The trade volume target of reaching 40 billion dollars by 2010, jointly set Chinese premier and UK prime minister in 2004, shall soon be achieved ahead of schedule. The UK becomes China's 3rd largest trade partner in EU, while China is UK's largest trade partner in Asia. The mutual investment between the two countries has enjoyed steady development. The accumulative UK investment in China has amounted to nearly 15 billion dollars and the UK remains China's largest investment country in EU, while the number of the Chinese enterprises investing and opening businesses in the UK has been increasing with each passing year; as the cooperation between the two sides in finance, tourism, logistics, commerce and other trade in services is in the ascendant. According to UK statistics, the China-UK trade in services had reached 4.4 billion dollars by 2006.
Chen said that since the introduction of the policy of reform and opening-up 30 years ago, China has achieved universally acknowledged results in socio-economic aspects. China's foreign trade volume had totalled 2.17 trillion dollars by 2007, or more than 100 times of that at the beginning of China's reform and opening up. For 15 successive years, China has maintained the leading developing country in utilizing foreign capital, which exceeds 750 billion dollars in accumulation, and its overseas investment has climbed to the 13th place from 26th with over 90 billion dollars, topping the list of the developing countries as well.
China is now devoted to building a energy-saving and environmentally friendly society, promoting industrial structure upgrading through innovations, transferring economic development to achieve sustainable development. All these efforts have offered an enormous opportunity for China and the UK to further develop mutually beneficial cooperation at a higher level and in a wider range.
Chen said under the framework of China-UK Joint Committee on Commerce and Trade the ministry is willing to make joint efforts with the UK Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform in setting up more platforms, providing better services and creating a more favourable environment for the economic and trade cooperation between the friends from economic circles of the two countries. He expressed strong belief that the China-UK economic and trade cooperation, through the concerted efforts by the two sides, shall definitely achieve even more fruitful results on the current basis.
With the theme of “Trade and Investment--Innovation through Partnership”, the summit was co-sponsored by China’s Ministry of Commerce and the UK Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, and nearly one thousand people from the two governments and enterprises were present.
|
Exhibition Info