Chinese Financial Minister Jin Renqing said in Tianjin on June 24 that China is willing to improve economic and financial cooperation with the world.

In an exclusive interview with Xinhua prior to the upcoming meeting of the Asian and European financial ministers, Jin said China will further enhance such cooperation to create a favorable external condition for the fast, balanced and healthy development of China's economy and to accelerate the establishment of a fair and reasonable new international economic order.

Jin said the future cooperation will focus on four areas, including improving financial cooperation among Asian countries, promoting international dialogue on finance and economics through existing multi-lateral and bilateral mechanisms as well as international monetary organizations to expand consensus, taking full advantage of the financial and technological support and intellectual resources to serve China's economic construction and promoting reform and development of the multi-lateral financial organizations like the World Bank.

With the growth of the Chinese economy, China has been increasingly active in joining international economic and financial exchanges and cooperation.

In October 2004, China held its first informal ministerial- level dialogue with the financial ministers of the Group of Seven. On June 11, Jin joined the dialogue between the financial ministers of the Group of Eight and four developing countries including China, India, South Africa and Brazil.

In the area of bilateral cooperation, Jin said China also made significant progress. He said in addition to the China-Britain and China-US dialogue mechanism established years ago, he and his German and French counterparts also kept regular visits to each other.

Besides, the China-Europe, China-India and China-Indonesia dialogue mechanisms have also been officially initiated, Jin said.

"China's financial cooperation with Asian countries also developed smoothly, which helped create favorable conditions for developing economic cooperation with neighboring countries and boosting regional cooperation," he said, quoting cooperative mechanisms including the meeting of financial ministers between ASEAN and China, Japan and the Republic of Korea.

Statistics from the Financial Ministry showed that by the end of 2004, international monetary organizations have promised a total of 54 billion US dollars' loan to China and the contract loan from foreign governments to China has reached 48.1 billion US dollars.

Leading finance officials from 38 Asian and European countries and the European Union are expected to gather in northern China's port city of Tianjin on June 26 to discuss issues concerning the global economy and closer Asian and European economic cooperation.

Representatives from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Asian Development Bank will also attend the meeting.

Source: Xinhua