On the afternoon of November 17, the Ministry of Commerce held a regular press conference. The spokesman of the Ministry of Commerce, Shu Jueting, first reported on the situation of China's foreign capital absorption from January to October this year: the actual amount of foreign capital used nationwide was 1089.86 billion yuan, an increase of 14.4% on a comparable basis, equivalent to 168.34 billion dollars, an increase of 17.4%.
Shu Jueting also mentioned that in the first 10 months of this year, the volume of bilateral trade in goods between China and the United States was 639.83 billion US dollars, up 5.1% year on year, including 6.6% growth in exports to the United States. She said that the economy of China and the United States is highly complementary and deeply integrated, and the healthy and stable development of bilateral economic and trade cooperation is beneficial to both countries and the whole world. Both sides should make joint efforts to create atmosphere and conditions for economic and trade cooperation.
With regard to the economic and trade cooperation between China and ASEAN countries, Shu Jueting said that China and ASEAN have actively implemented the consensus of the 2021 Leaders' Meeting and accelerated the completion of the joint feasibility study of the China ASEAN Free Trade Area version 3.0. At the 25th China ASEAN (10+1) Leaders' Meeting, Premier Li Keqiang and leaders of ASEAN countries jointly announced the launch of China ASEAN Free Trade Area (FTA) 3.0 negotiations. The two sides will conduct negotiations around areas of common interest, including digital economy, green economy, supply chain connectivity, competition, consumer protection, small, medium and micro enterprises, so that the China ASEAN Free Trade Area can better serve enterprises, face the future and address global challenges.
At the ASEAN China Japan South Korea (10+3) Leaders' Meeting, the leaders of the participating countries positively evaluated the significance of the effective implementation of RCEP, called on all parties to jointly perform their obligations under the agreement at a high level and release the dividend of the agreement to a greater extent. China has announced a donation of US $1 million for RCEP economic and technical cooperation, and will continue to help ASEAN members in need to improve their ability to implement the Agreement in the future. China also actively promoted all parties to support Hong Kong to join RCEP as one of the first new members.
In addition, through the mechanism of the China ASEAN Economic and Trade Ministers' Meeting, China and ASEAN jointly issued a series of economic and trade cooperation documents, including the Work Plan on Further Deepening China ASEAN Economic and Trade Cooperation and the Joint Statement of China ASEAN Economic and Trade Ministers on Post epidemic Economic Recovery Cooperation. In the Joint Statement on Strengthening China ASEAN Joint Sustainable Development and other documents, the achievements of bilateral economic and trade cooperation were fully affirmed, and a positive signal was sent to promote regional economic integration.
Next, China will work with ASEAN to implement the RCEP agreement with high quality, seize the opportunities of digital economy and green economy, promote the construction of the China ASEAN Free Trade Area (Version 3.0), build a new channel for international land and sea trade with more ASEAN countries, promote more high-quality products from ASEAN countries to enter China's big market, constantly expand the convergence of interests between the two sides, and promote the construction of a closer China ASEAN community of shared future.
