China and the United Kingdom (U.K.) had agreed to target 60
billion U.S. dollars worth of annual bilateral trade by 2010,
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said here on Friday.
The target was set by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and the visiting British leader, who
arrived here early on Friday for an official visit.
The revised target was among several consensuses reached during
the meeting between Wen and Brown. Others include the involvement
of vice premiers in the current vice-ministerial bilateral
financial dialogue, as well as cooperation on climate change,
health care innovation, sustainable cities and hosting the 2012
Olympic Games.
"The Chinese side highly praises the U.K.'s free trade and
anti-trade protectionism stance," according to a press release from
the Sino-U.K. industry and commerce summit held on Friday.
"Both sides believe in the broad prospects of future bilateral
trade and agreed to strengthen cooperation in the service and
technology sectors in bilateral trade and explore new areas for
cross investment," said the statement.
The economies of the two countries are "highly complementary,
and the two sides have much room for cooperation in service trade
and technological trade," Cheng Siwei, vice chairman of the
Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, said at the
summit.
He also noted that bilateral investment could be boosted. "We
welcome British companies to come and invest in China, and the
Chinese government was also encouraging Chinese enterprises to 'go
out'", he said.
Cumulative investment from the U.K. was 14.7 billion U.S.
dollars, according to Cheng.
Bilateral trade stood at 39.44 billion U.S dollars in 2007, or
about 11.7 percent of the total trade of the European Union with
China, which was 356.15 billion U.S. dollars. The EU was China's
largest trading partner.
The two sides signed eight agreements worth nearly 800 million
U.S. dollars on Friday to cooperate in areas ranging from education
to energy.
(Xinhua News Agency January 18, 2008)
