CORPORATE POWER: Chinese and European leaders attend a business gathering held alongside the China-EU summit in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, on November 30 (HAN YUQING)

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao must have been fully confident when he urged China and the European Union (EU) to help shape the world's future at the 12th China-EU summit on November 30.

As strategic partners, China and the EU should not only make joint efforts to cope with the global financial crisis, but also work to render the international political and economic order fairer and more equitable, he said at a joint press conference after the summit he had co-chaired in Nanjing, the capital of China's Jiangsu Province, along with European Commission President José Manuel Barroso and Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt of Sweden, which currently holds the rotating EU presidency.

Indeed, the EU, as the world's biggest economy, and China, its third biggest, each have plenty to offer the other—not to mention the rest of the world. Their recent summit once again underscored the two powers' shared interests in diverse fields ranging from boosting trade to tackling climate change.

Moreover, at a time when the world confronts a series of daunting global challenges, China-EU relations appear poised to take on new dimensions.

Business matters

Chinese and European leaders held "serious, constructive and friendly" discussions on issues including trade and the economy, said Ambassador Serge Abou, head of the EU Delegation to China, at a press conference in Beijing. The leaders agreed that China and the EU must cooperate in order to get out of the financial crisis, he added.

Two-way trade between China and the EU reached $425.5 billion in 2008, up 19.5 percent from the previous year, according to the Chinese Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM). Of this total, China's exports to the EU amounted to $292.9 billion, while its imports from the EU stood at $132.7 billion.

Jiangsu Province, which is home to many prestigious European-invested companies, took up 18 percent of the China-EU trade last year.

Under the devastating effects of the global financial crisis, meanwhile, bilateral trade decreased 18.7 percent year on year to $292.4 billion from January to October of this year. Despite the decline, the EU remains China's biggest trading partner, with the percentage of China-EU trade to China's total foreign trade volume keeping steadily at about 17 percent.

According to EU statistics, from January to August this year, the EU's total exports dropped 19 percent over the same period last year, but its exports to China only fell 3 percent. This is what MOFCOM believes is an indication of the EU's decreasing trade deficit with China.

China will continue to take active measures with which to increase imports from Europe, thereby addressing the trade imbalance between China and the EU, said Premier Wen at the China-EU summit.