Bilateral trade between China and the European Union grew 14 percent in 1999 as the two sides maintained a smooth relationship in trade and economic cooperation.

Latest figures released by the General Administration of Customs show that the two-way trade volume reached 55.7 billion US dollars last year. China's exports to the EU hit 30.2 billion US dollars, up 7.3 percent from a year ago, while the country's imports from the EU topped 25.5 billion US dollars, an increase of23.2 percent.

As a result, the EU continues to be China's third-largest trading partner after Japan and the United States. China is the fourth-largest trading partner of the EU after the US, Switzerland, and Japan.

China's main exports to the EU are garments, spun yarn and knitwear, footwear, suitcases, toys, radios and acoustic equipment, pharmaceuticals, plastics, coke, and hand and machine tools.

China's leading imports from the EU are machinery and electric products, wheat, primary plastics, cooking oil, paper and paper board, pharmaceuticals, chemical fertilizer, and copper alloy and rolled steel.

The stable growth of bilateral trade was made possible by the joint aspirations and efforts of both sides. Chinese President Jiang Zemin and Li Peng, top Chinese legislator or chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, visited some EU member-states last year, whereas the queen of the Netherlands, the German chancellor, and the prime minister of Greece all came to visit China.

"This high-level exchange helped increase the understanding of the two sides, and led to still better cooperation in trade and other economic sectors," said an official with the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation (MOFTEC), who preferred to remain anonymous.

The two sides also attended the second Asia-Europe conference and conducted dialogues on a number of trade-related issues last year.

European Union investment in China has grown steadily since the early 1990s. By October 1999, the number of EU-invested projects reached 10,025, involving a total contractual investment of 39.61 billion US dollars, and materialized investment was 20.74 billion US dollars.

Between January and October last year, the EU invested in 695 projects in China, but the contractual investment dropped 35.2 percent to 3.256 billion US dollars, and the arrived investment slipped 4.4 percent to 3.33 billion US dollars.

But experts noted that most of the EU-invested projects involve huge investments and are of high technical standards, which is just what China has desired.

In addition, the EU is a major source of China's technology imports. In the first nine months of 1999, the country imported a total of 280 items of technology from EU member-states, with a contractual volume of 2.457 billion US dollars and accounting for 65.8 percent of all technology imports in the period.

Nevertheless, there are still certain disputes in China-EU trade and economic cooperation, according to some experts. The EU's frequent launching of anti-dumping investigations against China, its restriction on imports of some Chinese products, and its banning of some Chinese agricultural produce, have been negative factors in bilateral trade.

"China and the EU have highly complementary economies, and there is great potential for further growth in economic cooperation and trade," said the MOFTEC official. "Two-way trade and economic cooperation will continue to grow as long as two sides make a serious effort to settle their disputes," he added. (Xinhua)