Kicking off his sixth trip to the largest European economy on Sunday, Premier Wen Jiabao, in meetings with his German counterpart Angela Merkel, will likely reaffirm China's conditional willingness to contribute to its proportionate share of the additional $430 billion Eurozone crisis firewall for the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The topic is expected to come up as Merkel accompanies Wen to the Hannover Messe on Sunday, and a China-Germany business summit as well as Volkswagen's headquarters on Monday.

Merkel, who had just exchanged telephone conversations with Wen on Wednesday, will waste no time with the Chinese premier during his two-day visit. Sources say the two are to hold discussions even in the van on their way to Wolfsburg on Monday.

China and some other emerging economies have pledged to contribute $68 billion at the IMF's annual spring meeting in Washington on Friday, provided that the IMF does not back out from a 2010 agreement to give them more say in how it is run.

The reforms will increase China's voting rights from 3.65 percent to 6.4 percent.

Germany, with the lion's share in a $200 billion commitment from the Eurozone, may press China to contribute more to help the EU, its No 1 trade partner, according to inside sources.

It was not immediately clear if former German Chancellors Helmut Schmidt, 93, and Gerhard Schroeder, 68, would touch upon this in their respective meetings with Wen before the Chinese premier was scheduled to give the speech at the Hannover Messe on Sunday.

Wen refrained from elaborating on the subject in his Sunday speech, saying only that the financial crisis is not over, and that the road ahead for economy recovery remains a tough one.

"The overexpansion of the virtual economy and its disconnection from the real economy in some developed economies is an important cause of the global financial crisis," Wen said.

More manpower, money and resources should be poured into the real economy to aid global recovery, he said, citing China and Germany as models in fighting the crisis as a result of their solid foundations of real economy.

"The Chinese and German economies are highly complementary. China boasts a great number of medium to lower-level industrial and mechanical processing products, while most German industrial products are high-end, high-tech and high value-added," said Wu Hongbo, China's ambassador to Germany.

At $170 billion, the volume of Sino-German trade surpassed the sum of China's bilateral trade with the United Kingdom, France and Italy.

Germany, as Beijing's top trade partner in the EU, has made more technology transfers to China than any other Western power, Wu said.

Berlin's pillar industries - auto, petrochemical and electronics – all have a market in China, he said, adding: "In our pursuit of transforming the model of economic development and improve technology, Germany is a very good partner."

"It is in this context that Germany chose China as the Partner Country of the Hannover Messe this year. China, too, is willing to showcase its industrial development and seek for more cooperation," Wu added.

Wen, in his Sunday speech, urged industrial firms around the world to work together. "(Cooperation) is the necessary choice in furthering common development and prosperity," he said.

Germany is the second leg of an eight-day trip to Europe for Wen, who left Beijing for Iceland on Friday. He will arrive in Sweden on Monday and then Poland on Wednesday.