China wants quality imports

  • 2012-11-28
  • From wire reports

OPEN DOOR: Participants at the Global China Business Meeting expect growing trade between east and west.

RIGA - European Union countries and the United States can offer China quality food products, said Jianlong Holding Group Company President Zhang Weixiang during the Global China Business Meeting forum held in Riga on Nov. 26, reports LETA. In the next few years, China will concentrate on building a balanced and sustainable economy, not rapid economic growth, he said.

The Chinese economy has been growing very fast during the past 30 years, but the new Chinese government is rather concerned about achieving a balance, striving for a green and sustainable economy, said Weixiang. These are the areas toward which the EU and U.S. investors should orientate themselves toward, he added.
According to Weixiang, the environment and food will be China’s priorities. The middle class in China is beginning to make a significant part of society, and they require food products of higher quality, which may be supplied by the EU and the United States, said Weixiang.

The Chinese company CICC representative Levin Zhu also said that the Chinese economy would continue to grow. At the moment, Europeans consider China a supplier, but this should change, and the EU as well as the United States should also see China as an export market.
Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis (Unity) said at the conference that the EU member states had a great potential to increase investments in China, which currently account for 2-3 percent of all EU investments. The EU trade with China has been growing fast during the past twenty years, and this cooperation should be further developed.

About 400 global business leaders - Chinese businessmen and their foreign cooperation partners, including heads of 100 Latvia’s largest companies - participated in the Global China Business Meeting. Business leaders from more than 35 countries also arrived in Riga for the forum.
The total amount of Latvian-Chinese trade was 377.9 million euros in 2011 - a 43.6 percent increase on 2010. Latvia’s exports to China last year totaled 47.9 million euros, an increase of 104.7 percent on 2010. Imports from China amounted to 330 million euros in 2011, 37.7 percent up from 2010.

Latvia’s key commodities exported to China include metals and articles of metal, mineral products, machinery, mechanisms and electrical appliances, agricultural products, wood and wood products.