By Vera Sam Anyagafu

The Consul General of the People’s Republic of China to Nigeria, Chao Xiaoliang, has expressed his government’s willingness to work hand-in-hand with Nigeria and other African countries governments to make economic globalization more open, inclusive, and enjoy win-win benefits in all aspects.

Consul General, Consulate General of the Peoples Republic of China in Lagos, Chao  Xiaoliang

Xiaoliang who said this, noted that China has embraced the world with open arms, made significant contributions to promoting international trade and increasing global well-being, hence become a key anchor and engine for the world economy.

“Since 2002, China’s contribution to global economic growth has approached 30 per cent on average and her economy has become a major engine for global economic recovery and growth. China’s imports and exports accounted for 10.2 and 12.8 percent respectively of the world total merchandise trade in 2017, making China a major trade partner of more than 120 countries and regions and the largest export market for the least-developed country members, even as it is most committed to ensuring infrastructure construction, professional trainings, productivity improvement, trade and investment development and much more to these countries.”

Xiaoliang went further to state, that for the years China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO), there has been major significant growth in the world economy and China has continued in efforts to improve its market’s economy system by further aligning its policies with multilateral trade rules in all areas, including open trade in goods and services, as well as strengthening intellectual property rights (IPR) protection.

“Since 2017, China has strengthened cooperation with the WTO and other international organizations under the South-South Cooperation Assistance Fund in ‘Aid for Trade’ to help other developing members. And from March 2018, China  accorded zero tariff treatment on 97 per cent of all tariff lines to 36 least-developed countries it has diplomatic relations with.

Also, IPR protection has been reviewed and revised, thereby, reduced all tariff from 15.3 per cent in 2001 to 9.8 per cent at present with non-tariff barriers significantly lowered.”, Xiaoliang disclosed, adding that, “China will continue concentrating on promoting, facilitating, balancing development of trade to align with the core principle of the WTO and make the world understand the importance of up-holding the multilateral trading system and .that economic globalization is an irreversible trend”

He therefore urges all , including the WTO to focus more on the concerns of developing members, saying as the largest developing country, China understands the difficulties of developing members to benefit from the global value chains and to participate in international economic and trade governance.

“In this light, China’s door of opening up will be even wider and from China’s WTO accession in 2001 to the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013, China has embraced the world with open arms and now the world’s second largest importer, expected to import USD24 trillion worth of goods in the coming 15 years, “ By proposing the Belt and Road Initiative, China joined hands with more than 80 countries and international organizations to achieve fruitful results and the total value of China’s trade with other Belt and Road countries exceeded USD 5 trillion, and total investment by Chinese enterprises in these countries exceeded USD70 billion from 2013 to 2017.

By the end of 2017, Chinese enterprises had set up 75 overseas economic and trade cooperation zones in relevant countries, contributed more than USD1.6 billion taxes to the host countries and created 220000 local jobs, the CG submitted.