China committed to further opening up for investment, ministry says

China is committed to further opening up for foreign investment, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said on Tuesday, responding to a European Union official's recent comments on protectionism.

China will continue to provide more opportunities to foreign companies and create an environment that is relaxed, orderly and fair for foreign investment, Lu said in a daily news conference in Beijing.

The EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said on Monday that the EU is ready to join China in fighting protectionism worldwide but Beijing also needs to show it can play fair on trade and investment, Reuters reported.

Malmstrom praised President Xi Jinping's speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, saying she agreed with Xi that a trade war would be catastrophic for all parties.

In his speech at the opening ceremony of the forum, Xi called on countries to "remain committed to developing global free trade and investment, promote trade and investment liberalization and facilitation through opening-up and say no to protectionism".

"No one will emerge as a winner in a trade war," the president said.

Lu said on Tuesday that China-EU trade cooperation "has gained a rich harvest", and China, through pushing forward reform and opening up over the past four decades, has provided an important driving force for the development of an open world economy.

"China-EU trade cooperation has a solid foundation and broad prospects. China has always been proposing tapping into potentials of cooperation and actively deepening all-round pragmatic cooperation," the spokesman said. "China hopes to work with the EU to maintain a free and open multilateral trade system."

The spokesman quoted the statistics issued by the Ministry of Commerce, saying that the EU members' investment in China last year witnessed a year-on-year increase of 41.3 percent.

He also quoted the World Investment Report 2016 issued by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and said China remains the second most popular investment destination in the world.

According to the report, Hong Kong and China ranked the second and third-largest host economies for foreign direct investment inflows in 2014 and 2015, following the United States.