China and Pakistan enjoy all-weather friendship and all-round cooperation. The recent years witnessed a rapid growth of bilateral trade, which increased by 20% for three consecutive years. In 2006, bilateral trade reached the historical highest level of 5.25 billion US dollars, among which Chinese export was 4.24 US dollars and import was 1.01 million US dollars, with the growth rate of 24% and 21% respectively. Both China and Pakistan attach great importance to the present trade imbalance problem. To promote the balanced development of the bilateral trade and to push forward the two countries' economic cooperation and trade in an all-round way, China's economic and trade delegation, led by Mr. Wang Chao, Assistant Minister of China's Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM), visited Pakistan from July 18 to 19.

As a matter of fact, the Chinese government organized its enterprises to purchase in Pakistan for many times in recent years, which has played a positive role in balancing the bilateral trade. With the strongest power and the biggest scale in history, all of the 12 visiting enterprises are members of China's top 500 enterprises, and among which, China Minmetals Corporation and Sinochem Corporation belong to world's top 500 enterprises. This fully demonstrates the determination and sincerity of China to pursue a balanced trade between the two countries. During the visit, Chinese enterprises will hold trade talks with their Pakistan counterparts on expanding import of Pakistan's advantageous products, such as chrome ore, marble, cotton yarn, leather, cotton linters, celestite and guar bean. It is estimated that China's purchase value will be more than 200 million US dollars.

China and Pakistan are highly complementary in their economic patterns. It is in the long-term and common interest of the two countries to build the economic relations and trade featuring complementarities, mutual benefit and win-win result. China does not pursue big surplus in the bilateral trade. On the contrary, it is China's hope that the bilateral trade can gradually become balanced and achieves sound development. In the future, China's government will continue to adopt active measures to encourage Chinese enterprise to expand import from Pakistan, promoting the sound and stable development of the bilateral economic relations and trade.