Broader economic co-op serves both interests of China, EU

Beijing hopes China and the European Union (EU) can take advantage of their economic complementarities to enlarge their cooperation.

Ambassador of the People's Republic of China to the European Union (EU). Wu Hailong, said in his article published Friday by European Voice, when commenting on the "friendly settlement" between Chinese companies and the European Commission for the photovoltaic panels file.

For Wu, China and the EU are important trading partners with deeply interwoven interests. "The EU has its advantages in capital, technology, innovation, talent, managerial expertise and environmental protection." These make it an indispensable partner to China in its pursuit of modernizations.

While "China's huge market, robust demand and healthy returns are providing a strong boost to the EU's recovery from the crisis."

"Broader economic co-operation is in the interests of both sides." Wu said.

"The solar-panel case is a reminder that protectionism cannot remove trade frictions. The EU's choice to pursue trade remedy measures cost both sides tremendous time and resources, and also undermined the EU's image in China and weakened the confidence of Chinese companies in doing business with Europe," warned the Chinese ambassador.

He stressed the importance of "a bigger cake" by multiplication as the enlargement of converging interests and exploitation of the potential of bilateral cooperation, to provide a larger development space to cooperation between China and the EU.

In order to ensure bilateral economic ties develop steadily in a long run, Wu said "the key lies in expanding cooperation and bringing interests closer together, so that both sides share the fruits of growth."

China and the EU should accelerate planning for their cooperation in 2020 and redouble their efforts to enhance cooperation in trade, investment, infrastructure, infrastructure, science and technology, innovation, green development and urbanization, with a view to optimizing the benefits of bilateral cooperation, said Wu.

Wu suggests China and the EU to make investment a priority. Currently, less than 3 percent of the EU's investment is in China. The same is true of Chinese investment.

"At present, our mode of cooperation is trade-led. It should be transformed into an approach driven by both trade and investment. Leaders from China and the EU have agreed to open negotiations on an investment agreement and the European Commission is seeking a negotiating mandate"

Wu expressed his hope that talks on the matter launched as soon as possible in order to ease access to each other's markets and feasibility studies conducted into the potential for a free-trade agreement.