ZAGREB - China and Croatia on Friday sought to enhance bilateral economic and trade cooperation in a bid to promote each other's national economic and social development, and to solidate relations between the two countries.

"Promoting economic cooperation and trade should be regarded as the top priority of the current development of the bilateral relationship," the visiting China's top legislator Wu Bangguo told Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic.

Wu, chairman of the Standing Committee of China's National People's Congress (NPC), said that both countries should fully exploit the huge potential of economic and trade cooperation and strive to transfer a good political relations into fruits of bilateral cooperation.

Wu started his six-day official goodwill visit to Croatia from Thursday. This is the first visit by a Chinese NPC Standing Committee chairman to this country within 12 years.

Croatia is China's largest trading partner in southeast Europe, and bilateral trade hit $1.6 billion in 2011, up by 16.2 percent over the previous year.

Wu suggested that the two countries further expand the scale of bilateral trade and gradually solve trade imbalance in development.

The two sides should also increase the infrastructure construction cooperation, expand the scale of two-way investment, Wu said, adding that several landmark large cooperation projects and a bilateral investment platform should start as soon as possible.

In addition, Wu suggested the two countries should promote tourism cooperation, saying that more Chinese tourists should be encouraged to visit Croatia, a country with rich tourism resources and an outbound tourism destination for Chinese citizens.

Zoran Milanovic, for his part, said that he fully agreed with Wu's comments on the bilateral relations and proposals on enhancing bilateral economic and trade cooperation.

"At present, the Chinese economy continues to grow in a sustainable and sound manner, while China has become an important driving force for world economic growth. Croatian government is looking forward to deepening the bilateral economic and trade cooperation with China," said Zoran Milanovic.

After the meeting, the two leaders attended a signing ceremony of memorandum on mutual investment cooperation.

Croatia is the second leg of Wu's four-European nation tour, which will also take him to Luxembourg and Spain. Wu had paid a three-day visit to the Netherlands before leaving for Zagreb.