NDRC, US firms hold roundtable meeting

The NDRC and US Multinational Enterprises Roundtable Meeting was held in Chengdu, Sichuan province on Tuesday.

With the theme of "Integrating into the Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Circle and the New Development Dynamic," the meeting was hosted by the Department of International Cooperation of the National Development and Reform Commission and the Sichuan Development and Reform Commission.

Speaking at the opening ceremony of the meeting, NDRC Vice-chairman Ning Jizhe said Sichuan and Chongqing are becoming the frontier for inland areas opening to the outside.

From January to August this year, the import and export volume of Sichuan's goods trade with the United States reached 132.39 billion yuan ($21 billion), a year-on-year increase of 25.4 percent, accounting for 23 percent of the total import and export volume of Sichuan's goods trade. The import and export volume of Chongqing's goods trade with the United States reached 75.2 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 21 percent and accounting for nearly 15 percent of the city's total import and export volume of goods trade, he said.

While the global goods trade decreased by 5.6 percent year-on-year last year, Sino-US goods trade rose against the trend, achieving an increase of 8.8 percent. That growth rate ranked first among China's five major trading partners. 

In the first three quarters of this year, the total value of Sino-US trade was 3.52 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 24.9 percent, 4.4 and 3.8 percentage points higher than that of China-ASEAN and China-EU trade respectively, said Gao Jian, deputy director of the Department of International Cooperation of NDRC.

So far, there are more than 70,000 US-funded enterprises in China, of which two-thirds plan to increase investment in China, Gao said.

This shows Sino-US business circles have long formed a community of interests that cannot be broken up, and cooperation is the aspiration of the people and the general trend, he added.