Trade volume between China and Vietnam in the first 10 months climbed 42.4 percent from a year earlier to 23.12 billion U.S. dollars, a Chinese official said here Tuesday.

Zhu Hongren, chief engineer of China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), said at a China-Vietnam trade seminar that the trade growth was pushed up by intensified exchanges between small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) of both countries.

Since China and Vietnam signed a memorandum of understanding on the cooperation between SMEs of both countries in an APEC ministerial meeting in 2006, SMEs from both countries have become more involved in the bilateral trade, according to Zhu.

Among the five China Economic and Trade Cooperation Zones that China established in ASEAN countries, two are located in Vietnam.