On July 10, the Chinese Trade and Investment Promotion Delegation dispatched by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce visited Italy to hold business talks, do exchange and promotion.

The 240 members of the Delegation are from more than 150 enterprises over 20 provinces of China. Of the enterprises, there are service enterprises of logistics and transportation, and investment & consulting, as well as manufacture enterprises involving such fields as electronics, machinery, paper making, Bio-Pharmaceutical and new energy.

Over 600 business representatives from China and Finland business attended the Sino-Finland Trade and Economic Forum, jointly sponsored by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce, and Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Economic Affairs of Finland, with a theme topic of "Cooperation, Innovation and Win-win" Gao Hucheng, the Vice Minister of Commerce and Head of the Chinese Delegation, Finnish Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Paavo V?yrynen and Minister of Economic Affairs Mauri Pekkarinen all delivered speech at the Forum. The Chinese party introduced its international cooperation on hi-tech and service trade, preferential policies for overseas investment and the China Export Commodities Fair, while the Finnish party introduced its innovation and investment environment and competitive industries.

Gao Hucheng said China and Finland are important trading partners to each other. Finland has been China's biggest trade partner among all the Nordic countries for 5 successive years; According to Finnish statistics, China has been Finland's biggest trade partner in Asia for 6 consecutive years. With China's industrial structure upgraded, there is a great prospect of cooperation for the two countries in information and communication, energy conservation and environmental protection, life Science, new material and equipment manufacture, etc. China hopes to further strengthen cooperation with the Finnish government and business community, and joint efforts to cope with the financial crisis.

Minister V?yrynen expressed his welcomes to the visit by the biggest China business delegation. He said he is honored to follow the rapid development of Finland-China trade and economic relations over the past 30 years. Being highly complementary in economy, Finland and China will benefit a lot from their bilateral trade and economic cooperation. Finland would like to work together with China to maintain the free flow of international trade and investment, to seek new markets, new opportunities and new partnerships, and to make new contributions to the recovery of world economy.

After the Trade and Economic Forum and the signing ceremony, Gao Hucheng and V?yrynen held talks and exchanged views over expanding bilateral investment cooperation and the WTO Doha Round negotiations.