Nation to send purchase teams to Europe

European Union Trade Commissioner Catherine Ashton (right) greets Vice-Premier Wang Qishan at the European Commission headquarters in Brussels yesterday.

BRUSSELS: China promised yesterday to send its companies on new multibillion dollar spending sprees in Europe as it called on the bloc, its largest export market, to resist new trade barriers.

Vice-Premier Wang Qishan told EU officials that the Chinese government will send several business delegations to Europe to repeat a February shopping trip where they spent $13.6 billion on contracts in Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain and Switzerland.

"We will send similar purchasing delegations to Europe and oppose trade protectionism with concrete action," he said at the start of two-day EU-China economic talks.

"We hope the EU will likewise take into full account China's concerns and ... take concrete steps to eliminate trade and investment obstacles," he said. "In order to jointly tackle the current crisis ... both sides should oppose protectionism in all its forms."

The EU's trade commissioner, Catherine Ashton, told the meeting that Europe was committed to free trade and the fight against protectionism, saying she hoped China would join the EU in pushing for a new world trade deal this autumn that could help lift their economies.

She also called on China to open up and tackle problems that European businesses say hold them back in their fastest growing export market. Companies are keen to see China do more to clamp down on copyright goods that they claim cost them a fifth of potential revenue.

"We should seek to address imbalances in business opportunities and confirm that we all profit from further opening of our markets," Ashton said.

Wang also called on the EU to relax restrictions on exporting hi-tech goods to China and help small businesses in both regions trade with each other.

He asked EU officials to understand China's "national conditions and its level of development" and the progress it has made toward opening up its market, improving safety and fighting counterfeiting.

The EU is China's largest trading partner and technology supplier. It is also the fourth largest source of investment for China, while China is the EU's second largest trading partner.

Even in 2008, when the financial crisis broke out and took its toll on the world economy, China-EU trade grew to $425 billion, an increase of 19.5 percent over the previous year, according to figures from China's customs. It outpaced expansion of China's trade with the United States and Japan over the same period.

The European Commission said the two-day dialogue will cover a series of issues, including trade, investment, small and medium-sized companies, customs cooperation, sustainable development, product safety and intellectual property rights.

All are meant to "strengthen trade and investment relationship between the EU and China in order to speed up recovery in the current economic crisis," the commission said.

It is the second time the EU and China have held a high-level dialogue on trade and economy. The first was in Beijing in April 2008 after the mechanism was agreed to at a China-EU summit in November 2007.

The dialogue is another sign that China-EU cooperation is getting back on track after a slight derailment last year.

China postponed a summit with the EU last November due to French President Nicolas Sarkozy's decision to meet the Dalai Lama when France held the EU presidency, but the mutual benefits in the fight against crisis soon brought them together.