The United Kingdom (UK) highly
values its relationship with China, and hopes to solve its trade
disputes through dialogue and negotiation, a senior UK official
said in the Asia-Europe High Level Economic Forum.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair
together with Minister of the Department of Trade and Industry of
the UK started visit in China on July 20, 2003. Ms. Elaine Drage, a
director with the Department of Trade and Industry of the UK,
headed the British delegation to attend the ASEM Economic
Ministers' Meeting in Dalian, northeast China's Liaoning Province.
Ms. Drage said in her speech that a
free trade environment is crucial for ASEM member countries. She
highly praised the progresses, which ASEM made in the past six
years, especially in some microeconomic fields like intellectual
property and standardization. Meanwhile, she urged the governments
of ASEM member countries to adopt measures to solve the problems
which block their development.
Ms. Drage said that ASEM members
should work together to solve disputes under the framework of
treaties. All the changes will be made through dialogues and
negotiations, she said.
"The value of the ASEM meeting is to
build the informal understanding between two important trade blocks
-- European Union and Asia," she pointed out.
She also urged to accelerate the
process of trade liberalization, which "benefit all the countries,
especially for these developing countries in Asia".
Ms Drage told china.org.cn after the
forum that UK cherished and emphasized the relations with
China.
"China is really an important market
which every country has to pay special attention to. It's
remarkable how much China developed in the past 20 years. We are
confident that China will become more important in the 21st
century, and we are sure China's development will continue over the
next few decades," she said.
As for the trade disputes between
China and EU, Ms. Drage hoped that there should be a revolving
system like WTO mechanism, which provides legal framework and
dialogues to know where the problems really are.
"I think that every country will
have trade barrier or things like that. China is a recent member of
WTO, so China is still in the process of reducing tariff, changing
numerous rules and regulations, and refreshing legal, financial and
industrial and trade standard," she added.
Statistics show that the trade
volume between China and UK had reached US$11.3 billion last year.
UK has invested over US$10 billion in China, topping the list of
all the European countries.
(China.org.cn by staff reporter Tang
Fuchun, July 23, 2003)