OREANDA-NEWS. July 29, 2011. The Second Meeting of the Second China-Germany Dialogue Forum was held in Berlin, Germany. Xu Lejiang, the Chairman of Baosteel Group Corporation, made a speech named "China and Germany should take the lead in promoting global investment liberalization". He pointed out that, China and Germany should take lead in promoting global investment liberalization. There are a lot of spaces for cooperation between Chinese and European steel enterprises, which is helpful to revive the European steel industry and to improve the technology and management of Chinese steel industry, reported the press-centre of Baosteel.

Sponsored by the Prime Ministers of both countries, China-Germany Dialogue Forum was founded in 2005 and each country will take turns to host it once every year. The first forum has successfully held five conferences. It provides a platform for both countries to find out and settle the bilateral problems, and makes some valuable suggestions for the leaders and the government of China and Germany to formulate related policies.

Around 30 famous people coming from the circles of politics, economy, culture, academic and news of China and Germany attended this meeting. In a spirit of open, honest, friendly dialogue, members of both countries made in-depth discussions about such topics as the cooperations in market access, low-carbon economy and electric cars, social security and China-Germany media exchange, etc., which also enhance China-Germany cooperative relations.

During his speech, Xu Lejiang stated his own understanding and opinions on the topic "Investment and Market Access in Europe and China". He said, China would still be the Holy Land to attract foreign investment in the future, and at the meantime, it had also been a big FDI country. With the new background of investment pattern, China and Europe should reconsider their policies on market access. China and Germany should set a good example and take the lead in driving global investment liberalization. Meanwhile, Xu Lejiang put forward some suggestions on promoting investment liberalization in China and the way the European Union, represented by Germany, treats China on investment access.

Xu Lejiang made an important elaboration of the investment cooperation between China and Europe in Steel Industry. He said, there is a large space for investment cooperatin of steel enterprises between China and Europe. Firstly, the conditions for opening Chinese steel industry in return for Chinese steel enterprises to go global are ready. Although Chinese steel industry is large in scale, but not strong enough, which has a lot to do with insufficient competition. Introducing foreign investment into Chinese steel industry is advantagous for full competition of the industriy and exchanging market space for the trans-national investment of Chinese steel enterprises.

Secondly, Chinese steel enterprises are ready for investment in Europe as they have an obvious advantage in certain fields like technology and engineering and construction as well as a certain amount of European customer bases accumulated during a long period of export. The long-term economic recession in Europe causes depression of local steel industry, which needs the injection of new capitals to lie itself out of the plight. While lots of Chinese steel enterprses have strong wishes to join in the international market, both parties have the base for investment cooperation.

Thirdly, steel enterprises in China and Europe have the possibility to cooperate to invest in a third country. To revive European steel industry needs emerging market. European enterprises are more familiar with local cultural environment in the emerging markets in future such as Africa and South America and also have some management advantages. Chinese enterprises have the advantage of funds and steel factory construction. So both sides could exert their respective advantages to exploit a third country investment markets. It will be a good win-win cooperation model.

Fourthly, there is a broad scope for steel industry in China and Europe to cooperate in research and development. Energy conservation and environmental protection is a common task for the global steel industry. European steel enterprises, especially the ones in North European countries, have a unique technological superiority in environmental protection and energy conservation fields. As a mature market, Europe is also the cradle of advanced needs of high end steel products and has good research and development foundation for new steel products.

 It is of profound significance that the steel enterprises in China and Europe cooperate in-depth in research and development field to promote technical progress of global steel industry. Xu Lejiang said, globalization is an inevitable tide, Baosteel is willing to carry out various investment cooperation with European steel enterprises in China.