Prime Minister of Israel Netanyahu met with Chinese Commerce Minister Chen Deming, Head of Chinese government trade and economic delegation, in Jerusalem on February 28.

Minister Chen firstly conveyed Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s greetings to Netanyahu. Prime Minister Netanyahu expressed his welcomes to the visit of Minister Chen and the delegation and asked Chen to convey his regards to Premier Wen.

Netanyahu said, Israel and China enjoyed profound traditional friendship and extensive common interests. Given the great potential in cooperation covering agriculture, infrastructure and investment, he hoped to expand the cooperation in all sectors in trade and economy and promote the further development of bilateral relations.

Minister Chen said, since the establishment of China-Israel diplomatic ties, the trade and economic cooperation between the two countries has developed rapidly. In 2010, bilateral trade amounted to US$7.65 billion, up by 150 times compared with that at establishment of the ties. The effective cooperation has covered the sectors of electronics, desalination of sea water, technology of trickle irrigation and venture capital. The visiting delegation including Chinese enterprises and financial institutions would like to seek for more cooperation opportunities with Israel. Moreover, China hopes to increase the import of hi-tech products from Israel so as to make the structure of bilateral trade more balanced.

The two sides also had in-depth exchanges of views on the mutual cooperation in agriculture, technology and infrastructure.

Zhao Jun, Chinese Ambassador to Israel, was present at the meeting.