FTZ network will promote open economic environment
Reflecting weak demand and the falling price of bulk commodities, trade between China and Russia fell 29.3 percent year-on-year to $61.3 billion during the first 11 months of 2015, a spokesman for the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) said on Wednesday.
The two countries will continue to expand the scale and improve the structure of bilateral trade in 2016 in a bid to reverse the situation, ministry spokesman Shen Danyang told a press conference in Beijing.
Although bilateral trade contracted, economic and trade cooperation achieved many results last year.
China maintained its role as Russia's largest trading partner, with Russia's trade with China accounting for 12 percent of its total foreign trade, up from 11.3 percent in 2014, according to the MOFCOM. With more deals signed in 2015, China's cumulative investment toward Russia now stands at $34 billion.
The two countries have stepped up efforts to promote strategic projects in many areas such as energy, nuclear power, aviation, rail transport and infrastructure construction.
"Bilateral trade is expected to resume growth in the next two years as market demand stabilizes or picks up," Huang Wei, director of the Institute of World Economics and Politics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Wednesday.
To strengthen global economic cooperation, China moved to set up free trade zones (FTZs) with some countries and regions in 2015, and it aims to create a global FTZ network in 2016, according to the MOFCOM.
China has signed 14 free trade agreements (FTAs) involving 22 countries and regions including the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, South Korea, Australia, Pakistan, Switzerland and New Zealand, the MOFCOM noted.
The ministry also said that the country will speed up talks on a China-Japan-South Korea FTA, a China-Sri Lanka FTA and a China-Maldives FTA in 2016.
To deploy a network of FTZs involving global economies shows China's desire for an open economic environment and its efforts to seek complementary advantages from other countries, Wang Jun, deputy director of the Department of Information at the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, told the Global Times Wednesday.
"This is China's focus in opening up in the next five years," he said.
"But some emerging markets and developing countries are quite cautious because smaller economies are less competitive in global trade," Huang noted.
Wang said China should seek balanced trade and import more products and services from these economies.
