Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is calling on the European Union to start working on creating a free trade agreement with China, amid growing investment interest and good economic cooperation, APA reports citing Sputnik.
Speaking at the "Sixty-Minute Briefing" event of the European Policy Center in Brussels on Monday, Wang Yi said that multilateralism and free trade are important for global development and peace.
"China and the EU should be partners for free trade. Apart from a high-quality investment agreement, we should work for an early start of negotiations on a free trade agreement, or at least the launch of feasibility studies on that front," the Chinese foreign minister said, as quoted by the Chinese Foreign Ministry in a Tuesday release.
Wang Yi pointed out that trade between China and the EU is growing and more European companies are expressing interest in investing in China.
"Even with rising trade friction between China and the US and mounting downward pressure on the global economy, economic and trade cooperation between China and the EU has bucked the trend and kept growing. In the first 11 months of this year, trade between China and the EU was estimated to grow by 7.7 per cent from last year. From January to July, EU investment in China was up by 18.3 per cent year on year. Sixty percent of EU companies regard China as a leading destination of investment," Wang Yi said.
He characterized 2019 as productive for China-EU relations and said that China regards Europe as an important cooperation partner and a priority on its diplomatic agenda.
"China and the EU should advocate and promote multilateralism and inject more positive energy to this world; facing the headwinds of protectionism, China and the EU should uphold free trade and make the world a more open place," Wang Yi said.
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