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China offers a wealth of opportunities

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Cai Mingzhao (right), minister of the State Council Information Office, greets Time Warner Chairman and CEO Jeff Bewkes on the sidelines of the Fortune Global Forum in Chengdu, Sichuan province, on Friday. [China Daily]

Chinese and foreign companies can achieve mutual benefits by deepening their cooperation and seizing development opportunities in the world's largest emerging economy, State Council Information Office Minister Cai Ming-zhao said on Friday.

China's growth has become an important driver for the world's development, and its prosperity can't be separated from the global economy, Cai said during his meeting with Jeffrey Bewkes, chairman and chief executive officer of Time Warner Inc, on the sidelines of the Fortune Global Forum in Chengdu, Sichuan province. The three-day event started on Thursday.

This is the first time that the forum, which gathers global business leaders, has been held in western China. The country has hosted the annual event three times, in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Beijing.

Cai urged Bewkes and other global investors to expand their businesses in the country's western region, as it has strong development momentum and market demand.

He stressed that China will keep its opening-up policies and provide a "fair, transparent, stable and effective investment environment" for foreign investors.

The Time Warner executive pledged to maintain cooperation projects with China and to communicate with the world to show the real face of the country's development.

In the first four months, non-financial foreign direct investment in China reached $38.34 billion, up 1.21 percent year-on-year, the Ministry of Commerce said. The figure suffered a 3.7 percent drop last year.

FDI in China consecutively accelerated for the three months to April. This is a sign that global investors recognize the new leadership's determination to continue with market-oriented reforms, and they also believe that the Chinese economy will keep its competitiveness in the coming years, analysts said.

Vice-Premier Zhang Gaoli pledged at the forum on Thursday to maintain stable and healthy economic growth as well as accelerate opening-up policies.

Zhang said the government will strengthen protection for the investors' legal rights and improve services for foreign businesses.

The State Council issued a statement two months ago pledging to deepen economic structural reforms, including speeding up the opening of the capital account, improving the internationalization of the yuan, and simplifying administrative approval procedures.

In the first quarter, China's GDP growth slowed to 7.7 percent from 7.9 percent in the fourth quarter of last year. The annual target growth set by the government is 7.5 percent this year.

Lian Ping, chief economist at the Bank of Communications, said that weaker economic growth is the "necessary price" paid for structural reforms.

"We're not pessimistic, although it shows weaker development momentum," Lian said.

Wang Tao, chief economist of China studies at UBS, wrote in a research note that China's importance as a market has grown significantly for almost all major trading partners over the past decade.

"How might China's importance as a market for different economies evolve in the future? It will of course depend on China's future growth as well as its success in rebalancing its economy to one less reliant on exports and investment," Wang said.

On Friday, Cai also urged countries to solve the Internet security issue based on mutual understanding.

"The Internet security issue is complicated," and countries need to seek common points to solve existing disputes, as their legal environments are quite different, Cai said.

Data from the National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team and Coordination Center showed that in the first five months of the year, 13,408 overseas Trojan horses or bot-controlled servers - two popular hacking tools - hijacked around 5.63 million mainframe computers in China. Of those, 4,062 United States-based servers hijacked 2.91 million mainframe computers in China.

The US ranked first in both the number of control servers and the number of mainframe computers controlled in China.

"China pays great attention to Internet development and the governance experience from foreign countries. We hope to deepen the communication and cooperation with other countries in terms of combating cybercrime, improving the Internet legal system and strengthening public education," Cai said.

He also met with company executives from DreamWorks Animation SKG, Intel Corp, WPP Group, Lenovo Group Ltd and AOL Inc.