On November 15, CEO Round Table Conference on the Sustainable Development of China-Netherland Bilateral Trade and Investment was held in Beijing. Gao Hucheng, Minister of Commerce, and Mark Rutte, Prime Minister of Netherland, attended and addressed at the conference.

Gao Hucheng said that since the establishment of the diplomatic relations between the two countries in 1972, China-Netherland economic and trade relation has enjoyed a continuous, rapid and healthy development. In the year of 2012, the bilateral trade volume reached USD 67.61 billion. Bilateral investment cooperation has been strengthened, and in particular, Chinese investment in Netherland witnessed an explosive growth. In the year of 2012, Chinese investment in Netherland reached USD 0.44 billion. And by the end of September 2013, Chinese investment in Netherland added up to USD 1.3 billion.

Gao Hucheng pointed out that, Chinese economy has entered into a medium and high-speed development stage with an evidently increased economic aggregate. China’s economy has entered into a developmental stage of transformation, and the future economic development will pay more attention to quality and benefit. The newly held Third Plenary Session of the Eighteenth Central Committee made a strategic deployment of the transformation development of China’s economy, making reform of the economic system the emphasis to fully intensify the reform. China will accelerate to improve modern marketing system, speed up to transform the function of the government, and through streamlining administration and delegating power to the lower levels, create a faire competitive environment for enterprises of all kinds of ownership, stimulate the creative vitality of market entities, making market to play the decisive role in resource allocation, and making better play of government function; China will also promote economic structural reform, develop mixed ownership economy, further relax control over market access in the fields of financial, petroleum, electric power, railway, telecommunications, resource development, public utility and service industry, and guide the private investment growth, providing wider development space to enterprises of all kinds of ownership. Meanwhile, China will continue to explore new ways of opening up. In 2013, China signed Free Trade Agreement with Switzerland and Iceland, and now China is negotiating with ASEAN on creating the upgraded China-ASEAN Free Trade Zone. China built the Free Trade Pilot Zone in Shanghai, exploring the administration mode of negative list, and putting emphasis on investment access and expanding liberalization of service trade. China sincerely welcomes enterprises from all countries including Netherland to participate in China’s economic development.

Gao Hucheng put forward four proposals for deepening China-Netherland economic and trade relations. 1. Promote trade facilitation and expand trade scales. 2. Optimize investment environment and vigorously develop investment both way. 3. Deepen cooperation on modern agriculture and make efforts to improve the cooperative level. 4. Broaden the cooperation in energy conservation and environment protection, combating climate change commonly. He called for that China and Netherland should make the governmental communication and contact closer, strengthen enterprises cooperation, broaden cooperation fields, and promote cooperation level, making China-Netherland economic and trade cooperation develop to a new stage.

Mark Rutte spoke highly of China-Netherland bilateral economic and trade relations. He said that, there is a long historybetween Netherland and China on economic and trade cooperation. Both country should strengthen the cooperation in WTO, and improve the bilateral economic and trade relations. China’s reform and opening-up will bring outstanding benefit to the world, and Netherland will grasp this opportunity to deepen economic and trade cooperation with China.

At the Conference, about 30 large-scale enterprises from China and Netherland made speeches on agriculture, energy and chemical industry, finance, high-tech and innovation, transportation and bilateral investment. About 100 representatives from government, trade promotion organizations and enterprises of China and Netherland attended the conference.