I'm told that German-Chinese trade rose by about 50% this year.
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China sees trade with Germany hitting $40 bln in 2003
BEIJING, Dec. 1 — Trade between China and Germany could hit $40 billion this year, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said on Monday during what has become an annual visit to China by German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.
''China is Germany's biggest trade partner in Asia and Germany is China's biggest trade partner in Europe. From January to October this year, bilateral trade already reached $33.4 billion,'' Wen told reporters in a joint news conference.
''This year it could reach close to $40 billion. This could be close to 40 percent of China's total trade with Europe,'' he said. Last year, bilateral trade surpassed the $23 billion traded in 2001.
Trade between China and Germany reached $33.46 billion in the January to October period, an increase of 49.8 percent on the same period last year, China's Xinhua news agency cited Wen as saying.
Schroeder landed in Beijing earlier on Monday for his fifth visit since taking office in 1998, accompanied by about 38 German business leaders, including Siemens AG chief executive Heinrich von Pierer.
German exports to China have been strong this year, helping to offset a slump in domestic demand. A senior German official said before the trip he was confident German investment in China could double in the next three years.
In Beijing, Schroeder opened an office of TUI China Travel, a Sino-German joint venture 51 percent owned by Europe's largest travel firm TUI AG.
He later met Chinese President Hu Jintao and Wen for their first talks in Beijing since Hu and Wen took office in March.
Following the talks, Wen and Schroeder looked on as China and Germany agreed to establish new consulates in the cities of Chengdu and Frankfurt. The countries also agreed to extend a two-year-old dialogue on law and human rights.
On the business side, Germany's biggest automaker, Volkswagen AG, signed a memorandum of understanding on cooperation with China's First Automotive Works, with which it already has a joint venture in the northeastern city of Changchun. No details were immediately available.
Wen said more time was needed to study a controversial scheme to build a high-speed magnetic levitation train line between Shanghai and Beijing.
Siemens and fellow German industrial group ThyssenKrupp AG have been hoping to build a maglev line -- a project known as Transrapid -- between the two cities, to go with a link nearing completion to Shanghai airport.
''As to the construction of the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway, because it is a big project, we need to give this sufficient consideration, and make scientific selection,'' Wen said when asked if China had made a decision on Transrapid.
''But no matter what, when we build this line, we will need to introduce the world's advanced technology and when we introduce the world's advanced technology, we have to have international bidding,'' he said.
Schroeder was scheduled to visit the booming southern province of Guangdong, where he would tour an international auto fair, and the western province of Sichuan.
from MSNBC |
