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PARIS: French President Jacques Chirac, who is due to visit Beijing this week, said Monday he hoped to strike strategic partnerships with China in areas such as nuclear energy and rail transport.
Chirac is due to make a four-day official visit to China from Wednesday, for talks with his counterpart Hu Jintao and a tour of three key cities. He will be accompanied by a large entourage of French business leaders.
“France wants to establish genuine, strategic industrial partnerships with China,” he said in comments to the Xinhua news agency which were released by his office here.
“This is already largely the case in the aeronautic domain. We think this example could be extended to nuclear energy, to rail transport and to other domains where France has unparalleled experience.”
France is in the running for the construction of a high-speed train line from Wuhan to Canton, and the delivery of four new nuclear reactors.
Chirac also said he hoped to open “new sectors” of cooperation between the two countries, such as telecommunications, financial services, agriculture and on environmental issues.
“On the other hand I am not satisfied with the weakness of our part of the market and by consequence with the unequal character of our commercial exchanges,” he said.
France holds only 1.4 percent of the Chinese market, compared with Germany's four percent.
“The partnership with China from now on is at the heart of France's foreign strategy because everyone knows that it's China that will play a large part in the future of the world,” Chirac said.
He said the partnership between China and Europe should flourish because “there are no rivalries of power between us, only common interests”.
But the French president said the relationship would be affected by issues such as outsourcing as well as China's “social and political evolution”, its impact on the environment and its “global ambitions”.
Chirac said he was “confident in the capacity of China to assert itself as a great, responsible nation committed to international security and the promotion of more equitable global economic development … and more respectful of the environment”.
Chirac, who last visited the country in 2004, announced plans for the trip in July following talks with Hu on the sidelines of a Group of Eight summit in Saint Petersburg.
He will arrive in Beijing, continuing to the central industrial hub of Wuhan, a city of 7.8 million inhabitants and home to the largest Chinese plant of French carmaker PSA Peugeot Citroen.
Chirac will wrap up his trip in the ancient city of Xian, the largest in northwest China and home to the country's famed terracotta warriors.
