After signing of a Free Trade Agreement (FTA), the trade volume between Pakistan and China, a time-tested all-weather friends, has reached to $6.54 billion. The Counsel General (CG) of China in Pakistan, Chen Shanmin said this in a seminar, entitled 'Inside China', organised by Management Association Of Pakistan (MAP) at a local hotel on Thursday.
He said China was investing in plenty of fields in Pakistan, most dominantly in agriculture, energy, defence, telecom and health sector. The two countries had recently signed an agreement to install two nuclear powers, the phase -3 and phase-4.
Shanmin said that his country was also investing $618 million in coal mining and power generation to meet the power shortages in Pakistan. Further, he said that Chinese mobile companies were also investing around $800 million in Pakistan, which would increase the trade volume up to $7billion in near future.
To a question, he said that a delegation of bankers were also in Islamabad to see the scope and environment of banking in Pakistan. The Chinese envoy said that by the time, more than 1,000 Pakistani students were studying in his country on scholarship and the number would be further increased in future. Shanmin said that after choosing the way of reform that began in the rural areas, China was celebrating its 30th successful year of reform and this year.
With momentous changes like building infrastructure, factories, spreading education, research and development and other extrapolations, China was expected to be the world's largest economy in 2030, he added. Pointing out on the social and political system in china, the CG said that socialism had grown up on their own land and the communist party had won the minds and hearts of Chines people after the war with Japan in 1949.
'Chines democracy is not only the one exists in the world but, our peoples know its real meaning. We do not copy the western form of democracy, though we shoo the best of other political or social system,' he added. Citing the economic development of the country, Shanmin said that the GDP growth from one percent in 1990 to the five-percent in 2008 was the result of the successful reform in the modern co-operative system, macro economic regulatory system of the advanced and centralised economy of China.
According to the CG, due to its fast developing economy, the China part in the in the world's poverty reduction was estimated to 67 percent. China recently had spent a historical huge amount of $43 billion in the Olympics game held in its own territory.Despite the recorded developments inside the country, China still had 50 million people in the clutches of poverty and its GDP behind the 100 GDPs of the states across the world, he added.