From renovating the existing railway system in India to promoting industrial projects, China, according to its Consul-General in Mumbai - Liu Youfa is keen to partner with India.

Soon after landing in Coimbatore, Dr Youfa met this correspondent to broadly explain the purpose of his visit. The Consul-General of the People’s Republic of China was accompanied by a team comprising the Commercial Counsellor Liu Guoyu and two Vice Consuls - Chong Li and Cong Lu.

The four member delegation is on a three day tour of this region to study the textile park, visiting a couple of textile mills and understand the competitive advantage of partnering with Indian companies by investing either in India or China.

While stating that the team is here to reach out to the textile entrepreneurs, Dr Youfa said that the joint venture with Chinese counterparts would not be limited to textiles. ‘We are also looking at cooperative projects in infrastructure space such as subways, inter-train commuters, smart city projects, modernising the existing villages, strengthening the holding capacity of reservoirs, food processing etc.’

“China has agreed to promote industrial park projects here. One would be coming up near Pune in Maharashtra and the other near Ahmedabad in Gujarat. The Pune Park would concentrate on auto and auto ancillaries manufacture, while the Ahmedabad park project on power generation and equipment manufacture.’’

The Pune park is coming up in an area of about 6 sq km and on an investment of $ 5 billion. It would take five years to complete this project. It would be done in three stages.

Leading Japanese construction company Futon would extend production lines in the Pune venture. The project is a joint venture between Japan and China, Dr Youfa said.

The area of the Ahmedabad industrial park would be around 10 sq km, he said.

Conceding that India is the largest trading partner for China, he said “the two way trade in the last three quarters registered just $56 billion, which is a miniscule compared to the global trade of $17 trillion last year.’’

Emphasising the need to strengthen trade ties between the two countries, he said “India is soft in the manufacturing sector. Indian companies need to produce more quality good. Trade promotion has to be done to adjust the trade imbalance between China and India. And for this, we have to look at two-way investment by encouraging more Indian manufacturers to produce more tradable good.’’

To yet another query, he said “Chinese direct investment in India is around $1 billion, whereas, Indian investment in China is over $4 billion”.

According to him, successive governments here prevented China from participating in developmental projects.

He appealed to the textile community here to do a lot of promotion in China. South India Mills Association (SIMA) is coordinating the visit of the Chinese delegation.

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