| Chen Deming Meeting with Lee Youn Ho: China will never Adopt Trade Protectionism against Foreign Enterprises and Products |
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| Tuesday,June 30,2009 Posted: 13:20 BJT(0520 GMT) |
Chen Deming, China Minister of Commerce, met with Lee Youn Ho, Korea Minister of Knowledge and Economy, on June 26 in Beijing. The two sides had in-depth discussion on further strengthening China-Korea trade and economic cooperation.
According to Chen, China and Korea have close trade and economic relations. Confronting the financial crisis, China would like to implement the consensus reached by the leaders of the two countries, so as to maintain the steady development of China-Korea trade and economic cooperation. He put forward five suggestions on further strengthening bilateral cooperation: exploring new trade growth point; expanding mutual investment; supporting Chinese and Korean enterprises for the strategic cooperation with the third country; joining forces in opposing trade protectionism; giving to trade and economic promotion activities sponsored by the other party.
When introducing China’s current economic situation to Minister Lee Youn Ho, Chen said, China keeps adopting a package of plans to expand domestic need, and positive changes has been seen in China’s economy. When implementing the policies and measures of addressing the crisis, China always sticks to open, fair and transparent trade and economic policies, encourages import and export trade, develops two-way investment, which has brought huge opportunities to enterprises at home and abroad. Many foreign brands won the tender and benefited from the policy of “Home appliances to rural areas”. In accordance with “The Government Procurement Law”, the Chinese government reiterated the provision that “the government shall procure domestic goods”. This provision is only limited to the government procurement projects using fiscal funds, and the said domestic goods also include products manufactured by lawful foreign-invested enterprises in China. Some media said China will adopt the policy of purchasing domestic goods in economy-stimulating plans. That is not true. China has always been opposing trade protectionism, and won’t adopt the protectionism to discriminate foreign enterprises and products. Chen also said, China had applied to be a signatory to WTO Government Procurement Agreement. He hopes the main members of WTO can adopt a flexible and practical attitude to lower the threshhold, so as to facilitate China’s early accession to the Agreement, which will be favorable to further mutually open up the market of government procurement.
Lee Youn Ho expressed his agreement to suggestions by Chinese side on developing Korea-China trade and economic cooperation. Lee said, it is of great importance for Korea and China’s coping with the financial crisis to develop Korea-China trade and economic relations. Korea would like to deepen the cooperation with China in trade, investment and other fields, and hopes to participate actively in China’s investment projects of infrastructure, energy, etc. The Korea side believes China’s trade policy is fair and transparent, and would like to fight with trade protectionism together with China.
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