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Foreign and Military Affairs

China will keep working productively with rest of Asia

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-11-04 20:35

BEIJING - China will continue to work with other Asian countries to bolster the economic recovery and growth in the region, Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Hu Zhengyue said Thursday.

Hu made the remarks when asked to comment on China's role in the economic recovery of Asia and the world generally.

As the international financial crisis is far from over, Asia's economic development still faces many challenges, predictable and non-predictable, Hu said.

East Asian countries have become an important powerhouse for world economic growth over the past two years, Hu said.

According to Hu, China and other Asian countries realized a trade volume worth $640 billion in the first nine months of this year, an increase of 38 percent year-on-year. China's imports from these countries stood at $361 billion for the same period.

"China remains the largest market for Asian countries," Hu said, adding that China has increased aid to Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan to even out trade imbalances, extending preferential taxes to 70 percent of goods exported to China from Bangladesh and Afghanistan.

ASEAN-China Free Trade Area, established on January 1, 2010, has significantly accelerated flows of capital, materials, technologies and human resources between the two sides, Hu noted.

Chinese statistics showed that the trade volume between the two sides reached $211.31 billion in the first nine months this year - 43.7 percent rise year on year.

China is also pushing for a free trade area (FTA) with other East Asian countries, Hu said, noting that China, Japan and the Republic of Korea (ROK) will complete a joint study on the proposed FTA by 2012.

China is committed to working with other East Asian countries to promote building of roads, railways and ports in the region, said Hu.

Besides economic cooperation, China has pledged a total of $250 million to flood-hit Pakistan. The Chinese government and Red Cross Society of China has respectively donated $500,000 and $30, 000 for disaster relief work following earthquakes, tsunami and volcano eruptions in Indonesia.

The Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s and the international financial crisis since 2008 have made Asian countries more united and have lifted cooperation in the region to a higher level, Hu said.