France enjoys huge popularity in China: Paris is the city where most Chinese couples would like to spend their honeymoon; French wine is believed to be the best; and goose liver and snails are enjoyed by many Chinese.

France is not only well-known for its "art de vivre" (living art), but is also home to some highly-advanced technologies in various fields, in particular, environment, energy, telecom, transportation, agri-food and car industrie. The recent victories of Renault and Michelin in the F1 world championship illustrate some of the successes of France technologies.

While China-France economic and trade relations deepen and the Chinese become affluent, services from France like luxury consumer services, logistics, and financial services have a chance to play a significant role in balancing and promoting economic exchanges between the two countries, said Annick de Kermadec-Bentzmann, president of the French Chamber of Commerce and Industry in China (CCIFC).

"Globally speaking, overall co-operation between France and China is very positive," said Bentzmann, who was born in China and has worked in China for the past two decades.

Statistics from France show annual bilateral trade has risen from 9 billion euros (US$11.43 billion) to 30 billion euros (US$38.1 billion) in the past 10 years. It is also encouraging that the trade imbalance between China and France is narrowing.

In 2005, China had a trade surplus of US$2.6 billion against France, but in the first eight months of this year, the growth of French exports was by 25 per cent, twice the speed of the growth of China's exports to France and the trade deficit on the French side was US$1.15 billion, according to the Ministry of Commerce in China.

"Up to now, there is quite a big deficit on the French side, but we have seen the trend that imports from France have been growing faster than exports from the Chinese side," said Bentzmann. "We should be exporting more to China," she added.

While a big focus of China's exports has been on machinery and equipment, there will be increasing demand for high-tech and luxury consumer goods and services from France.

According to an Asia-Pacific wealth report by Merrill Lynch, China has 320,000 people each with a wealth over US$5 million and three fourths of these people are 55 years or younger, the youngest population of millionaires in the region.

Chinese tourists are almost in every corner of Paris and rich Chinese people become big buyers of French luxury goods like Louis Vuitton, Moet & Chandon and Hermes.

As this year is a critical year for China to honour its commitments to the World Trade Organization (WTO), many of which are in the service sectors such as retailing, banking, insurance, distribution, architecture design, and telecommunications, French firms with their global competitiveness will also benefit from the opening, said Bentzmann, who is also the executive general manager of the French banking giant BNP Paribas' Shanghai Branch.

"I believe very honestly that it can only be positive in the future," she said.

According to the commitments, big French names like Carrefour and BNP Paribas do not need to form joint ventures with Chinese partners anymore and can open offices wherever they want.

The development of the retailing giant Carrefour has brought many of its small and medium-sized suppliers into China, 250 in the last year alone.

The head of the board of CCIFC believed the investment environment in China had improved and that French firms, especially the small and medium-sized ones were no longer "shy" in coming to do business in China.

In the past two years, CCIFC has helped provide a lot of information about China through media coverage and companies have begun to get a true picture of the market.

The French business community in China, one of the biggest foreign employers in the country, is still growing, as the number of CCIFC's members is approaching 1,000, compared with 850 in 2005.

(China Daily 10/25/2006 page18)