The United Kingdom (UK) highly values its relationship with China, and hopes to solve its trade disputes through dialogue and negotiation, a senior UK official said in the Asia-Europe High Level Economic Forum.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair together with Minister of the Department of Trade and Industry of the UK started visit in China on July 20, 2003. Ms. Elaine Drage, a director with the Department of Trade and Industry of the UK, headed the British delegation to attend the ASEM Economic Ministers' Meeting in Dalian, northeast China's Liaoning Province.

Ms. Drage said in her speech that a free trade environment is crucial for ASEM member countries. She highly praised the progresses, which ASEM made in the past six years, especially in some microeconomic fields like intellectual property and standardization. Meanwhile, she urged the governments of ASEM member countries to adopt measures to solve the problems which block their development.

Ms. Drage said that ASEM members should work together to solve disputes under the framework of treaties. All the changes will be made through dialogues and negotiations, she said.

"The value of the ASEM meeting is to build the informal understanding between two important trade blocks -- European Union and Asia," she pointed out.

She also urged to accelerate the process of trade liberalization, which "benefit all the countries, especially for these developing countries in Asia".

Ms Drage told china.org.cn after the forum that UK cherished and emphasized the relations with China.

"China is really an important market which every country has to pay special attention to. It's remarkable how much China developed in the past 20 years. We are confident that China will become more important in the 21st century, and we are sure China's development will continue over the next few decades," she said.

As for the trade disputes between China and EU, Ms. Drage hoped that there should be a revolving system like WTO mechanism, which provides legal framework and dialogues to know where the problems really are.

"I think that every country will have trade barrier or things like that. China is a recent member of WTO, so China is still in the process of reducing tariff, changing numerous rules and regulations, and refreshing legal, financial and industrial and trade standard," she added.

Statistics show that the trade volume between China and UK had reached US$11.3 billion last year. UK has invested over US$10 billion in China, topping the list of all the European countries.

(China.org.cn by staff reporter Tang Fuchun, July 23, 2003)