China and Britain agreed Monday to expand cooperation to meet the challenges faced by the world economy, realize the United Nations Millennium Development targets, and reform the international financial system.

China and Britain should expand financial cooperation to eliminate global economic destabilizing factors, said Chinese Finance Minister Jin Renqing during a meeting with his visiting British counterpart Gordon Brown.

China hopes to further cooperate with Britain under the mechanism of Group 20, and improve consultation with Britain on the efforts to build a just and rational global economic governance framework and, help raise the voice of developing nations on the international financial arena, said Jin.

Jin said China, chair of this year's meeting of Finance Ministers and governors of central banks of Group 20, and Britain, chair of this year's Group 7, will cooperate with each other to give full play to the two groups.

Brown, who began his three-day visit to China on Monday at the invitation of Jin, is scheduled to meet Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and other senior Chinese economic officials. He will visit Shanghai, China's biggest industrial city, and Shenzhen, a boomtown bordering Hong Kong.

The two ministers issued a nine-point joint declaration after their meeting, which also called for bilateral cooperation to promote the process of the Doha round of trade talks.

Source: Xinhua