Wang Yang: Agricultural cooperation strongly supports the stable development of China-US economic and trade relations
On November 22, Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang attended the 26th China-US Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade in Guangzhou, and joined US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and Trade Representative Michael Froman at the China-US Agricultural and Food Cooperation Symposium.
Wang Yang said that this year is a bumper year for China-US agricultural cooperation. During President Xi Jinping's visit to the United States in September this year, the heads of state of the two countries reached a series of important consensuses on agricultural cooperation. Agriculture is an important point of converging interests for China and the United States, and also a relatively stable area of cooperation. Agricultural cooperation has brought tangible benefits to enterprises and people in both countries, and has also strongly supported the stable development of China-US economic and trade relations.
Wang Yang pointed out that the Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee put forward the new development concepts of “innovation, coordination, green, openness and sharing,” pointing the way for China's agricultural development. China's agricultural modernization will not only benefit the 1.3 billion Chinese people, but will also certainly bring greater opportunities for China-US agricultural cooperation. China and the United States should expand the scale of agricultural cooperation, refrain from trade protectionism, and provide facilitative conditions for each other's high-quality agricultural products to enter their own markets as well as for each other's enterprises to invest; should expand areas of cooperation, and in addition to traditional areas such as trade and investment, also open up new horizons for cooperation in areas such as agricultural science and technology innovation, joint talent training, disaster prevention and reduction, inspection and quarantine, food and agricultural product quality and safety, and agricultural finance; should accommodate each other's concerns and, through good communication, seek mutually beneficial and win-win solutions; and should give full play to the role of various cooperation mechanisms, not only the traditional mechanisms such as the Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade, the Strategic and Economic Dialogue and the Joint Committee on Agriculture, but also new platforms such as the Agricultural Strategic Innovation Dialogue, and should leverage the unique role of non-governmental institutions to build a broader bridge for China-US agricultural cooperation.
Vilsack and Froman said that China is a country with a far-reaching vision and has made extraordinary progress in many fields, and that the United States is willing to establish closer economic and trade ties and stronger bilateral relations with China. Agriculture and food safety are areas where the two countries can reach more consensus, and they hoped that the two governments, enterprises and research institutions would strengthen exchanges and cooperation in this field.
After attending the symposium, Wang Yang met separately with Vilsack and Froman to exchange in-depth views on issues related to China-US agricultural and trade cooperation.