China's southern province signs projects worth billions of dollars with US enterprises

A delegation of China's southern Guangdong Province signed 28 cooperation projects worth 4.14 billion U.S. dollars with U.S. enterprises here on Friday.

More than 200 U.S. enterprises and 85 companies from Guangdong Province participated in the China(Guangdong)-U.S.(New York) Economic and Trade Cooperation Conference, where the projects were signed.

Hu Chunhua, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and secretary of the Guangdong Provincial CPC Committee, and Patrick Santillo, deputy assistant secretary of commerce for China at the U.S. Department of Commerce, were among the participants.

Hu said Guangdong Province will further strengthen exchanges and cooperation with U.S. states to achieve mutual benefit and win-win results.

He put forward ways to strengthen bilateral economic and trade cooperation, including expanding two-way investment and bilateral trade, deepening cooperation in technological innovation, tourism and cultural exchanges and establishing long-term mechanisms for such cooperation.

Data from the provincial government show that the United States is Guangdong Province's second largest trading partner.

Foreign trade between China's Guangdong Province and the United States totaled 128.3 billion dollars in 2015, accounting for 12.55 percent of the province's total foreign trade.

By the end of 2015, the province had set up 555 companies in the United States with contractual investment of 3.7 billion dollars and actual investment of more than 2.1 billion dollars.

Cui Tiankai, Chinese Ambassador to the United States, who was also present at the conference, said local cooperation is an important part and a cornerstone of the China-U.S. relations, as well as the most direct way to benefit the people.

The Chinese delegation also held similar economic and trade cooperation conferences in Detroit and Boston this week.