Canadian PM Trudeau's free trade remarks welcomed

Beijing on Wednesday welcomed Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's remarks about trade with China, saying it is ready to work together to push forward the building of a free trade area.

Trudeau told the 2018 Fortune Global Forum in Toronto that as the world's second-largest economy and growing, China will remain an important place to do business.

"Both China and Canada are important economies in the Asia-Pacific region. The two countries highly complement each other in their economies and share huge potential and immense prospects in cooperating with each other," Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said in a daily news briefing.

He said China hopes to work with Canada and continue to promote the construction of the China-Canada free trade area in a pragmatic and open manner, keep deepening pragmatic cooperation in areas including trade, and push the Sino-Canada strategic partnership to new levels.

Trudeau also said his country will continue trade talks with China.

"Certainly, discussions are continuing with China on moving forward on various trade opportunities," Trudeau said in an interview with The Globe and Mail before attending the forum on Monday afternoon.

The remarks came days after the phone conversation between State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his Canadian counterpart Chrystia Freeland.

Freeland briefed Wang on the situation of the signing of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, and said that the free trade agreement should be open and inclusive, and should not exclude any partner, according to a ministry statement.

China, which has repeatedly voiced support for free trade and multilateralism, became the largest recipient of foreign direct investment against a downward global trend in the first half of 2018, a United Nations-sponsored report shows.

According to the report recently issued by the UN Conference on Trade and Development, foreign direct investment in China saw an increase of 6 percent in the first half of 2018, while global FDI fell by 41 percent.

China was the largest FDI recipient during the period, attracting more than $70 billion in investment.

The basic situation of China's economy is good in the long run, Lu said on Wednesday, adding that other countries are making their choices of whether to keep or even expand trade and investment cooperation with China based on their own interests.

Xinhua contributed to this story.