and President Lagos exchanged visits and jointly established the all-round partnership featuring long-term stability, equality and mutual benefit. During President Hu Jintao's visit to Chile in November 2004, the leaders of the two countries reached important consensus on establishing and developing the bilateral all-round partnership, declared the launch of the China-Chile free trade negotiations and signed a number of cooperation documents, which stimulated the development of bilateral relations. Economically, the bilateral economic and trade relations enjoy a sound momentum of development. In 2000, the bilateral trade volume was $2 billion and in 2005 it exceeded $7 billion, up by 2.5 folds within five years. By the end of this June, Chile has invested in 98 projects in China, with a total commitment of $125 million and paid-in capital of $52.59 million. China has invested in 21 companies in Chile, with the agreed investment amount standing at $27.8 million. China has become the second largest trading partner of Chile. The bilateral cooperation in the fields of technology, health care, sports and tourism keeps expanding and people-to-people exchanges grow increasingly active. The two countries keep close consultations and collaboration in the international and regional affairs. Friendly China-Chile cooperation has brought about tangible benefits to the two countries and the two peoples. The purpose of my visit is to raise the already existing friendly relations between China and Chile to a new level.

Ladies and gentlemen, friends:

Both China and Chile are developing countries and face the tasks of developing economy and improving people's living standards. To deepen China-Chile economic and trade cooperation is an important content of pushing forward the all-round bilateral partnership, which not only serves the fundamental interest of the two peoples but also promotes the regional and world peace and development. Next I would like to take the platform of the China-Chile Economic and Trade Cooperation Forum to talk about China-Chile economic and trade cooperation.

China and Chile share strong economic complementarities and enjoy promising prospects of economic and trade cooperation. The stable social environment, sustained and strong development momentum and broad market with huge potentials of China are providing increasing business opportunities and driving force for the economic development of Latin American countries including Chile. Chile has been well known as the "kingdom of copper". It is also the largest forest products exporter in Latin America and the fifth largest fishery country in the world. Maintaining rapid economic growth over years, Chile is one of the Latin American countries with relatively developed economy. All these have created favorable opportunities for the two countries to conduct mutually beneficial cooperation. More importantly, both sides have a strong wish of strengthening mutually beneficial cooperation and raising cooperation quality and level. I believe that both sides should look at and develop the bilateral economic and trade cooperation from a strategic height, make use of our advantages in the principle of mutual benefit and win-win cooperation to expand cooperation areas, broaden cooperation ways, enrich cooperation contents and push the bilateral economic and trade cooperation to a new level.

To that end, I propose the following four suggestions:

First, implementing the free trade agreement and expanding bilateral trade. The free trade agreement signed between the two governments has incorporated all the articles concerning trade in goods and the core is to lower and cut tariff and non-tariff barriers and improve market access conditions. Its implementation will facilitate the bilateral trade in goods and stimulate the development of related industries in the two countries. The two sides should make full use of the favorable conditions created by the free trade agreement to improve the commodity trade structure, diversify the traded commodities, strengthen the exchange of information on market, products and trade, promote the goods of each other in the Asian and Latin American markets, broaden the bilateral trade and raise the bilateral economic and trade cooperation level.