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China Ready to Take Active Steps to Increase Imports from UK: Vice President
Chinese Vice President Hu Jintao Monday urged the British businessmen to seize the opportunity of participating in the competition on the Chinese market with longer and wider perspectives, and promised the Chinese government would help create more favorable conditions.
Delivering a speech at the banquet hosted in his honor by the China-Britain Business Council, Hu said that in recent years, the relationship between China and Britain gathered a good growth momentum and was buttressed by steadily increased common interests, deepened mutual understanding and mutual trust.
He said top leaders of both countries had placed high importance on developing the relationship. Bilateral exchanges and cooperation in various fields had kept expanding and producing rich results, Hu said. All this served as a sound basis for even closer cooperation in trade, economy and other endeavors.
According to Chinese official figures, two-way trade between China and Britain has grown steadily, approaching 10 billion U.S. dollars last year and totaling 7.58 billion dollars in the first three quarters of this year. Of the European Union members, Britain has become the second largest trading partner of China.
Hu said he was pleased with the continued development of bilateral commercial ties, and that there was great untapped potential for further cooperation.
He noted that in China's priority development areas, like infrastructure, telecommunications, energy and environmental protection, Britain was strongly competitive and should seek to play a bigger role.
On the current trade imbalance, the Chinese vice president told the British businessmen that China was ready to take active steps to increase imports from Britain.
"Right now, both the mix and level of China's imports and exports, as well as the foreign investment China seeks to attract, have undergone significant changes," Hu said. He added that China needed more high-tech products and personnel with managerial and professional expertise.
He noted that as international competition for the Chinese market share intensified, China enjoyed greater leverage in choosing its partners consistent with market rules.
He said China welcomed friends from British business communities to explore new areas while consolidating their traditional advantages, readjusting their export mix to China to include more high-tech products, stepping up technological transfers and realizing a balanced trade by constantly increasing the trade volume.
He noted that the China-UK Investment Partnership, jointly launched recently by the China-Britain Business Council and China' s Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation, represented a useful effort to further expand investment cooperation.
The Chinese vice president said he was confident that with concerted efforts, the mutually beneficial cooperation between China and Britain would have broad prospects and bear even richer fruit.
Vice President on Domestic Economic Development, Opening-up Policy Hu Jintao said that opening up to the outside world is China' s basic and long-term state policy and once joining the World Trade Organization (WTO), China will earnestly fulfill its rights and obligations and play its due part in promoting economic development and trade around the world.
He said that while taking an active part in economic globalization, China has worked hard to carry out international economic cooperation in great scope and depth.
"Our 15 years of negotiations for WTO membership are an important part of such efforts," Hu said.
The Chinese vice president also thanked the British government and the business community for their support to China in its bid to join the WTO. He told British businessmen and entrepreneurs that China is committed to opening wider to the outside world in an all-directional and multi-tiered way, with an even more active approach.
"Such sectors as finance, insurance, telecommunications, trade, commerce, transportation, construction, tourism and intermediary services will be open gradually to foreign investors," Hu said. " China will vigorously seek new ways and new channels to attract foreign capital and allow foreign investors to set up equity or contractual joint ventures or solely owned businesses in accordance with China's law and regulations."
Hu said that while making more areas gradually available for opening-up, China will adopt open, transparent and equality-based policies on trade and investment, continue to improve the environment for investment and business cooperation, encourage fair competition, offer national treatment so as to increase investor confidence and predictability in China.
On China's economic development, Hu said that China has made remarkable progress in the past few decades, particularly since the beginning of reform and opening-up over two decades ago. A socialist market economic system has been basically set up in China and an all-directional opening-up pattern has taken initial shape.
He noted that China's economy has managed to grow fairly rapidly in recent years. In 2000, China's GDP (gross domestic product) topped 1 trillion U.S. dollars, ranking sixth in the world, and its foreign trade reached 474.3 billion dollars, he said, adding that China has attracted more foreign investment than any other developing country for eight consecutive years and the Chinese people, on the whole, are now living a comparatively well- off life.
The Chinese vice president said that with continued economic and social development, the enormous potential of the Chinese market will be further tapped.
He said that in the coming five years, China will import about 1.4 trillion dollars worth of equipment and technologies, build 10, 000 kilometers of highway, increase the power generation capacity by 52,000 megawatts, and increase the recoverable reserve of crude oil by 95 million tons and that of natural gas by 37 billion cubic meters. The number of telephone subscribers will grow from 280 million to 500 million and that of Internet users to 200 million.
Hu told his audience that the promising Chinese market will offer even more business opportunities to foreign investors and that business people in Britain are most welcome to be part of China's modernization drive.
Hu arrived in London Sunday for an official visit to Britain after winding up a working visit to Russia. Britain is the second leg of his five-nation Europe tour which will also take him to France, Spain and Germany.
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