Agricultural alliances need innovation to boost global trade ties

China should develop more innovative approaches to agricultural cooperation as a combination of trade and investment to more efficiently boost collaboration on international capacity with Russia, an official said Wednesday at a forum in Beijing.

The forum, part of the 2017 International Industrial Capacity Cooperation Forum and the ninth China Overseas Investment Fair, focused on economic and trade cooperation among countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative.

He Zhenwei, secretary-general of China Overseas Development Association, said: "Russia's agricultural products are popular in China, such as flour, honey and chocolate, but they don't have that much production capacity to meet the demand from China's market."

According to data from the General Administration of Customs of China, the volume of China-Russia bilateral trade reached $69.53 billion in 2016, where China is the largest food exporter to Russia while Russia's agricultural exports to China increased 4.1 percent year-on-year during the first half of 2017.

China and Russia maintain close agricultural cooperation, and the industries of both countries are highly complementary.

"So China can take advantage of its sufficient capital and production capacity to promote production in Russia, and then meet the huge market demand in China," He said.

"It's a win-win strategy to achieve economic and trade cooperation," he added.