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Mission to US, Canada

By Ding Qingfen (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-04-17 07:59

China will send a trade delegation to the United States and Canada early this June to promote bilateral economic relations between itself and North America.

Related readings:  Sino-US trade up 10.5% in 2008  China and US reach trade agreements  Growth of China exports to US slows  China-Canada trade ties robust

More than 350 Chinese enterprises in sectors ranging from real estate, textiles, food, health care, hi-tech and machinery have applied to partcipate in the delegation. A majority of them are small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) while some are State-owned companies. The list includes Sinopec, Beijing Capital International Airport, Datang Telecom, Baidu.com, Huaqi, and Sequoia Capital.

"We are very surprised by the great passion that Chinese companies have shown," said Raymond Wu, deputy director of the American & Oceanian Affairs Division and Department of International Relations under the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT).

CCPIT is in charge of organizing the delegation.

"We thought there would be no more than 80 corporate applicants," Wu said.

This is the first business delegation that the CCPIT has organized for the US, and the third for Canada.

After several months of double-digit growth, China's foreign trade growth has been plunging since last November, but the decline eased in March.

In March, the China-US trade volume decreased by 12.6 percent year-on-year to $22.65 billion, accounting for 14.5 percent of Chinese foreign trade. In the first quarter, 445 Chinese enterprises invested overseas, up 6.8 percent year-on-year.

A source from the Ministry of Commerce said that China will send a delegation to the US at the end of April, similar to the trade mission that went to Europe in February where Chinese enterprises signed deals worth over $13 billion in four countries.