Trade between China and Germany, China's largest European trade partner, will reach 50 billion US dollars this year, says a Chinese trade official.

Sino-German trade in the first nine months of this year had totaled 39.44 billion US dollars, a 32.7-percent rise year-on-year, said Li Haiyan, deputy director of the European Affairs Department of the Ministry of Commerce (MOC), quoting the latest figures provided by the Chinese customs.

Trade between the two countries topped 41.88 billion US dollars last year, Li said at Wednesday's conference on Sino-German cooperation on environmental management.

Some 600 Chinese and German environmental officials, specialists and entrepreneurs attended the conference, held in Xiangtan City, central China's Hunan Province.

MOC statistics indicate that by the end of August, German businesses had invested in 3,871 projects in China, which involved 17.09 billion US dollars of contractual investment and 9.55 billion US dollars of actual investment.

Germany has also outnumbered other European countries in technological transfer to China. By the end of August, 2003, the most recent year for which data is available, China had introduced 7,588 technologies worthy 28.03 billion US dollars from Germany, according to Li.

Meanwhile, statistics from Germany show China has replaced Japan since 2002 as its largest trade partner in Asia. Globally, China is Germany's second largest trade partner outside the European Union, following the United States.