The European Union Chamber of Commerce in China issued European Business in China Position Paper 2005 in Beijing On Sept. 4. 86 percent of European companies in China say they are optimistic about doing business here.

According to the report, the sixth edition of its kind since 2000, by December, 2004, trade between China and EU had topped 176 billion euro. EU is China's largest trade partner and China is EU's second largest trade partner.

The paper has declared that all the 25 EU members hold positive attitude toward trade relations with China. Many of them saw their trade with China increase last year, especially Hungary and Estonia, whose trade soared by 21 percent and 30 percent respectively. Germany, UK, Holland and France, together conducting two-thirds of trade, are still the most active trade partners.

In the past five years, European enterprises invested 4.3 billion euro in China on average annually, mostly operated through joint-ventures, in addition to transfer of know-how and sophisticated technologies. Many have built their sourcing bases in China.

European businesses acknowledge China's fulfillment of its WTO commitment on time or even ahead of schedule. A majority of them believe the WTO membership has exerted positive effect on China's business environment.

Several new policies, on automotive brand sales, renewable energy, and IPR, have drawn special attention of respondents of the survey. The implementation of ADS (approved destination status), as well as simplified process of registration of imported cosmetics is also applauded by European businesses here in China.

Small and medium-sized European enterprises have observed the opportunities on China market and the competitive production base here, especially when China has allowed wholly owned foreign trading subsidiaries on wholesale and retailing with very low capital threshold and reduced the capital requirement for foreign companies in areas of consulting service, sci-tech development and manufacturing. Some 3,500 European SMEs have invested in China.

European energy companies have strong interest in clean energy programs in China. They hope to participate into projects reducing HCFC 23, which is believed to a potential greenhouse gas.

However, chamber members think the IPR and transparency are still two major challenges and look forward to improvements on these two aspects. They also hope the focus of Sino-EU dialogues shift from the strict interpretation of the WTO accession terms to "the practical reality of implementing and enforcing commitments".

By People's Daily Online