China-EU ties in past 40 years

ECONOMIC AND PEOPLE-TO-PEOPLE COOPERATION

In the past 40 years, bilateral trade and economic ties have also witnessed rapid progress.

The EU has been China's biggest trade partner for 11 years in a row, and China has been the EU's second largest for 12 consecutive years. Last year two-way trade surpassed 600 billion U.S. dollars.

So far EU investment in China has added up to nearly 100 billion dollars, and China's cumulative investment in the EU has now exceeded 50 billion dollars. In 2014, Chinese enterprises invested more in the EU than their EU counterparts did in China.

Bilateral people-to-people exchanges have also yielded fruitful results. The two sides have set up such cooperation mechanisms as the China-EU forum and the China-EU cultural summit.

In 2011, the China-EU Year of Youth was launched with all-round youth exchange activities throughout the year.

In February 2012, the China-EU Year of Intercultural Dialogue was launched in Brussels to further boost mutual understanding and cultural cooperation.

In addition, the China-EU cultural summit has been successfully held for four consecutive years since October 2010, and the high-level dialogue mechanism on people-to-people exchanges has also achieved positive progress since the first meeting in April 2012.

Official data show that China and the EU have more than 5.5 million of their people traveling between the two sides and nearly 300,000 students study in each other's schools every year.