Address By Minister Lu Fuyuan At Asia-europe High Level Economic Forum

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Honorable Ministers, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,Today, I'm very glad to be in north China's beautiful coastal city Dalian to attend the Asia-Europe High Level Economic Forum.

Now, economic globalization is developing rapidly and has become, in the world economic development, the most prominent trend. One economic globalization's remarkable feature is the close link of different economies with their interdependence increasing.

Any country or region is unlikely to break away from other countries or regions to develop alone. Cooperation has become all countries' common demand for economic growth.

We believe that the economic cooperation among ASEM members should respect their diversities of national conditions and their disparities in economic growth, which serves as the prerequisite, and should keep to equality and mutual benefit and a progressive and pragmatic manner.

A mutual beneficial and win-win result should be our common goal.

I believe that through our efforts Asia-Europe economic cooperation will comprehensively develop and will display its great vigor and vitality, ...
... Ladies and gentlemen,China has experienced two decades of reform and opening-up.

Its national economy has made a rapid growth, its internal and external trade has achieved fast development, and its market scale is continuously expanding. At the end of 2001 China joined the WTO, which indicated China's opening up entered a new stage.

The opening up is gradually moving towards an all-directional, multi-level, broad in scope and legal-framework-oriented one. After China's accession to the WTO, the Chinese Government has been conscientiously, responsibly and comprehensively fulfilling its commitments, greatly lowing tariff rates, eliminating non-tariff measures, relaxing service and investment market access, and establishing an international-rule-oriented and national-condition-oriented trade and economic administration system.

China's trade and economic policies are consistent and transparent increasingly and the market access has been further broadened.

Currently, China's market size is already among the world's largest ones. China's steel consumption accounts for one quarter of the world's total output; its cement consumption makes up over 40 percent; its highways have extended to 25,000 kilometers, ranking the second in the world; the number of telephone users has exceeded 400 million, ranking the first; and the number of Internet users has reached 59.10 million, ranking the second.

In the past five years, China's total imports reached US$1.0698 trillion. It is estimated that in the next three years China's imports will hit US$1 trillion.

China offers the world and all its business communities' great business opportunities. By the end of last year, China had all together approved foreign-funded enterprises of over 420,000, with a contractual value of US$828.

1 billion and an actually utilized value of US$448 billion. Now, most of the foreign-funded enterprises are running well. From the fast growth of China's economy, they are making good profits.

This year China's economy generally keeps a momentum of growth. From January to June, China's total import and export volume reached US$376.143 billion, up 39 percent over the last year. Of that, export reached US$190.321 billion, up 34 percent. Import reached US$185.822 billion, up 44. 5 percent. Here I'd like to particularly mention the rapid growth in import, with ten percentage points more than that of export.