| Mr. Bo Xilai Held Talks with Thomas Ostros, Minister for Industry and Trade of Sweden |
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| Friday,October 27,2006 Posted: 22:24 BJT(24 GMT) Chinese Embassy |
Mr. Bo Xilai held talks with Thomas Ostros, Minister for Industry and Trade of Sweden, in Stockholm, in the afternoon on Sept. 15 during his visit to Sweden. The two sides exchanged views on issues of Sino-Sweden trade and economic relations and Doha Round Negotiation.
Mr. Bo Xilai positively appraised the Sino-Sweden trade and economic relations, he said that Sweden was the first western country to establish diplomatic relations with new China and the two countries launched trade exchanges a long time ago. In 2005, the bilateral trade between China and Sweden amounted to US$5.7 billion, China became the biggest trading partner of Sweden in Asia for 3 years running. China praised the position of Swedish government on insisting of free trade, opposing of EU's restriction against Chinese textile products and anti-dumping measures against Chinese shoes. Sweden had remarkable advantages in fostering of talents, information technology and management mode for trade facilitation, Mr. Bo Xilai hoped that China and Sweden could maintain deepening cooperation in the area to take advantage of each other's strengths. China would import learn the advanced technology of environmental protection and learn abundant experiences of city reform from Sweden to further expedite the process of urbanization to improve people's living standard.
Ostros expressed his appreciation on China's great achievements of economic development, he said that Sweden was a high internationalized country, the huge potential at Chinese market strongly attracted Swedish enterprises, and Sweden was willing to enhance cooperation with China in high technology, energy saving, environmental protection, vehicle manufacture, and information communication to provide favorable development opportunities to enterprises of the two countries.
When referring to the issue of Doha Round Negotiation, Mr. Bo Xilai stressed that Doha Round was a round of development and was crucial for developing members, the settlement of issue of development was an important criterion to measure the success of Doha Round. The negotiation would not be resumed if the situation of serious distort of global agricultural trade was not changed. He hoped that developed members like USA and EU could present more sincerity on agriculture and make essential reduction to break the current impasse and resume negotiation to reach the goal as scheduled. China, as a responsible member of WTO, always played a constructive role in Doha Negotiation and would like to maintain strengthening negotiation and cooperation with all members to actively stick up for an open, fair and reasonable multi-lateral trade system without discrimination.
Ostros said that the Swedish government was positively advocating free trade and firmly opposing trade protectionism, Sweden was willing to make mutual efforts with Chinese government to inject new vitality into Doha Round Negotiation to push forward the negotiation to obtain more progress.
After the meeting, Mr. Bo Xilai and Mr. Ostros signed together, on behalf of the two governments, the Agreement on Sino-Sweden Economic, Industrial and Technical Cooperation.
In the morning, Mr. Bo Xilai and representatives from Sweden business circle held talks and answered their questions, he welcomed Swedish enterprises to invest in China and hoped that they could win the credit of Chinese consumers depending on favorable quality and all-round service. Heads from Ericsson, Volvo, IKEA, ATLAS COPCO, ABB and H&M etc. announced the situation of their business, investment and cooperation in China. Representatives from Federation of Swedish Enterprises, Sino-Sweden Trade Committee and Investment Promotion Agency of Swedish took part in the talks.
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Bilateral Visits