BEIJING, July 10 (Xinhua): Wan Jifei, president of China Chamber of International Commerce said yesterday that the country needs to participate in the formulation of global economic and trade rules apart from taking part in international division of labour and competition.
Wan, also chairman of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, said at a chamber meeting that with Chinese companies getting stronger capabilities and the country having increasing influence globally, to get a bigger voice is conducive to protecting the legitimate interests and rights of domestic enterprises.
Zhang Yanling, vice president of the Bank of China, said China is engaged closely with foreign countries economically and the scale of trade and labour service export is keeping on growing.
Zhang added that Chinese companies should not only be familiar with existing international rules, but should also play an active role in setting up these rules and voice their opinions in international economic arena.
Meanwhile, China's trade surplus fell nearly 12 per cent to 99.04 billion dollars in the first half of this year, as a struggling US economy hit the country's exporters, official data showed today.
The surplus in June alone was 21.35 billion dollars, the customs bureau said in a statement on its website, a decline of 20.7 per cent year-on-year.
Total trade in the first half this year was 1.23 trillion dollars, up 25.7 per cent from the same period last year.
Imports from January to June grew 30.6 per cent to 567.57 billion dollars, the bureau said on its website. Exports rose by 21.9 per cent year-on-year to 666.61 billion dollars.
The trade surplus between January and June this year was 13.48 billion dollars less than the same period last year, a decline of 11.98 per cent, based on calculations using data posted on the bureau's website.
The Chinese government said last month the nation's trade surplus was likely to shrink in 2008 for the first time in five years on weakening exports, mainly due to the rising local currency and the US economic slowdown.
The yuan has risen steadily from 8.3 to the dollar about three years ago to roughly 6.85 currently since China loosened its peg to the greenback, placing huge pressure on Chinese exporters and making imports cheaper.
"China's export growth eased notably in June, despite remaining in the double-digit territory," Sherman Chan, an economist at Moody's Economy.com, said in a research note.
