Paris and Beijing seal their reconciliation - July 10, 2010
It is a ranking Chinese perfectly at ease, quoting Voltaire, Montesquieu, Hugo and the Palace of Versailles, which opened yesterday the forum on cooperation and investment Franco-Chinese organized by MOFCOM (Ministry of Commerce of the People's Republic), the France-China Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Paris.
Wu Bangguo, chairman of the Standing Committee of National People's Congress of China, which was received late yesterday afternoon by President Sarkozy is on an official visit in France until July 14 to seal the reconciliation between Paris and Beijing. Accompanied by more than one hundred business leaders, he will also travel to Lyon, Bordeaux and Marseille.
Forgot the Dalai Lama, forgotten criticism on human rights. Place business.But behind the smiles, Wu Bangguo, who also prepares the programmed displacement of Chinese President Hu Jintao in France before the end of the year, has three messages to convey.
For Westerners who criticize the Chinese to keep their currency, the yuan, undervalued to help their exporters, the Speaker said that his country, despite its tremendous growth, is not rich. "Some of my foreign friends asked me even though China was still a developing country," he joked before answering: "China is and will long remain in the primary stage of socialism."
Market economy
The income gap between cities and countryside, 10 million peasants that break every year in cities, the backlog in education, health care, social security are challenges ahead."The prosperity we have achieved is still a low level of prosperity, incomplete and unbalanced. 150 million people live on less than a dollar a day, "says Wu.
China is also lagging behind technologically, insists the chairman of the Assembly. His "independent innovation capacity is still insufficient," he says to make it clear that if France has invested in some 4000 projects on site, the "great economic power has, in turn, of obvious advantages in science, technology, human resources, management and marketing "and it is time extending them to Chinese.
This great power, said Wu Bangguo, should also be the messenger of China in Europe.Beijing was "with a functioning market economy, marked by greater protection of intellectual properties," says the chairman of the Assembly. "The general level of tariffs has increased from 15.3% in 2002 to 9.8% in 2010." China is a member of the WTO (World Trade Organization). It is therefore necessary that the European Union "as soon as possible recognize the market economy status," says number two China.A statute that the President of the European Parliament, Jerzy Buzec, still does not want to hear.
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