- Nineteen prisoners use cutlery to break out of cells at Winchester prison
- France wants progress in Ukraine before Russia returns to G7
- Italy president begins talks to seek way out of government crisis
- Italian PM expected to resign as political chaos deepens
- Russia says US cruise missile test ‘regrettable’
- Kremlin - No date set for Normandy talks on Ukraine despite Macron meeting
- Egypt court hands out 6 death sentences on terror charges
- Putin says Russian nuclear explosion poses no threat
- Russian panel eyes alleged foreign interference in protests
- Gran Canaria wildfire triggers evacuation of thousands of people
- PM Johnson calls on Germany and France to compromise on Brexit
- Sudan's ex-president Bashir arrives at corruption trial
TEHRAN, Jan 18 - Germany and China on Friday signed agreements to strengthen coordination in banking, finance and capital markets, and pledged to further open market access and deepen their pragmatic cooperation to broaden economic ties.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC) - The agreements were made at the close of a two-day visit by German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz to Beijing for talks with Vice Premier Liu He, who is President Xi Jinping's top economic adviser.
Both sides reaffirm that "they will strengthen macroeconomic policy coordination and pragmatic cooperation in the fiscal and financial fields and expand strategic cooperation," according to a joint statement issued at the end of their talks.
Trade between the two nations has softened amid uncertainty caused by the U.S. tariff dispute with China, but both have shown willingness to demonstrate that the world remains multilateral.
The agreement said they will make joint efforts to improve international economic governance, maintain the global multilateral system, combat trade protectionism and support the rule-based multilateral trading system with the World Trade Organization as its center.
"It is important that, contrary to recent trends that we can observe elsewhere, we are seeing progress in our cooperation," Scholz told reporters before the talks at the Diaoyutai State Guest House in the Chinese capital.
Market access for banks and insurance companies on a level playing field and in the context of reciprocity is important, added Scholz.
"As the world economy slows, market volatility rises, creating greater risks," Liu told reporters.
Berlin stresses its "close and advantageous" trade ties with China, whose rise has displaced Germany from its ranking as the world's third-biggest economy to the fourth.
At the same time, it increasingly seeks to better protect and strengthen sensitive German and European business sectors from China's state-backed acquisitions overseas in strategic industries.
"If you work closely together, you learn to appreciate similarities, but also to know differences," Scholz said.
"And we have a lot of common interests in financial matters, and then we need to bring different perspectives together. I believe that is the very important task of this financial dialogue," he added.
Both sides agreed that German-Chinese cooperation benefited their economies, and they are committed to ensuring a non-discriminating, open market access environment, and to easing existing market access and investment barriers in both countries.
Source: Reuters
Your Comment