California, China work to boost business

Updated: 2016-05-12 11:03

By Lia Zhiu in Los Angeles(China Daily)

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China and California, the world's second- and eighth-largest economies, have been working at the sub-national level to seek cooperation in areas such as biotech, clean tech, investment and cross-border e-commerce to boost bilateral trade and investment.

A Chinese delegation of 130 members, including entrepreneurs and government officials, is visiting California. They attended the California-China Business Summit held on Wednesday in Los Angeles, where they met their US counterparts.

The Chinese economy has slowed down recently, and China has reduced purchases, and all sorts of economic problems have been seen in different parts of the world, which illustrates the interdependency that the countries now have, California Governor Jerry Brown told the summit.

"In a very profound way, human beings are inclusively tied together by their mutual impact based on what they do," he said. "That's a big problem, because we have so many languages and differences. There's no doubt that leaders in Shanghai see the world differently than the leaders in Washington."

But he noted that through gathering together and business arrangements, "we build that connective tissue to slowly bring the world close together".

In the past three years since the framework of China Provinces-US California Joint Working Group on Trade and Investment Cooperation was established in 2013, Chinese enterprises have invested in more than 300 new projects, almost half of the total Chinese-invested projects in California, Chinese Consul General in Los Angeles Liu Jian told the summit.

China has become the largest trading partner of the United States. By the end of 2015, the United States had invested in 66,000 projects in China, and Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI) in the US had reached $46.6 billion, creating more than 90,000 jobs in the US, according to Liu.

"I want to make sure the China relationship with California works in so many ways because I don't want to minimize the dangers in this world today," said Brown. "People will be affected, either positively or negatively, based on how the China-US relationship unfolds over the coming years."

SEE "trade" PAGE 2

liazhu@chinadailyusa.com

(China Daily 05/12/2016 page1)

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