国内英语新闻:Senior Chinese official calls for enhanced trade, economic cooperation with EU

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.