Asia-Pacific countries should adopt effective measures to strengthen trade and economic cooperation, Wu Bangguo, chairman of the Standing Committee of China's National People's Congress, said in Beijing Monday.  

Wu said at the opening of the 12th Annual Meeting of the Asia-Pacific Parliamentary Forum (APPF) that economies in the Asia-Pacific region are mutually complementary, with vast cooperation areas and broad prospects in economic cooperation.

As economic globalization deepens, interdependence between countries grows stronger, he said. Stronger trade and economic cooperation is both an objective requirement for a country to participate actively in international labor division and an inherent need for a country's own economic growth.

"We should also bear in mind that globalization has taken place and sped up with the unfair and unjust old international economic order remaining basically unchanged. Nowadays the gaps between the North and South, and between the rich and poor are still widening, and new trade barriers keep cropping up," Wu said.

All these elements have negatively affected developing countries, thrown the evolving multilateral trade regime into fresh difficulties and caused setbacks for global economic recovery and growth, he said.

Wu said these issues should be solved earnestly through the development of trade cooperation. The sound development of regional and global economic system on the basis of equality and mutual benefit is essential to strengthen South-South cooperation and to promote North-South cooperation.

Developed countries are obliged and duty-bound to further open their markets, ease restrictions on technology exports, remove trade barriers, and show more concern and provide more help to developing countries, so as to enable all countries to share the benefits of economic globalization, Wu said.

Trade and economic relations are important components of state-to-state relations and the economic foundation for peaceful coexistence, Wu said, adding that stronger trade and economic cooperation is conducive to consolidating and developing state-to-state relations, which in turn creates conditions for deeper economic cooperation and trade links.

China is becoming more active in the world, as it opens wider to the world and participates more in international economic and technological cooperation and labor division, Wu said.

In particular, China continuously enhances trade and economic cooperation with Asia-Pacific countries, Wu said.

China-ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) trade, for example, has grown six-fold in the past decade. Negotiations on setting up a China-ASEAN Free Trade Area have made gratifying progress. The "Early Harvest" program within the framework of the Free Trade Area was implemented on Jan. 1, providing a foundation for more intensive cooperation, Wu said.

The experience of trade and economic cooperation between China and ASEAN as well as other Asia-Pacific countries demonstrates that, under the principles of mutual benefit, equality and openness, countries are fully able to become long-term and stable economic and trade partners and help bring about a sound regional economy with complementary advantages and common prosperity, Wu said.

(Xinhua News Agency January 13, 2004)