The upcoming visit of Dutch King Willem Alexander and Queen Máxima to China is a confirmation of the good bilateral relationship between China and the Netherlands, and it offers great opportunities for the two countries to further cement trade and economic ties, said a senior official of the Netherlands.
At the invitation of Chinese President Xi Jinping, the royal couple is scheduled to visit China from Wednesday to Thursday, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang announced on January 30.
Since their previous visit to China in 2015, economic cooperation has gone "extremely well" and the Netherlands has been very supportive of Chinese investors, Roland Brouwer, consul and executive director for China at the Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency, told the Global Times on Tuesday.
Chinese companies have set up more than 600 enterprises in the Netherlands, creating more than 12,000 jobs, according to Brouwer. The country ranked top three in terms of investment from Chinese companies to Europe by the end of 2016.
The Netherlands is China's second-largest trading partner in EU after Germany, boosted by the country's position at the end of the China-proposed Belt and Road (B&R) initiative, according to Brouwer.
Since the China-Europe railway from Chengdu, capital of Southwest China's Sichuan Province, to the port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, also Europe's largest port, opened in November 2016, bilateral trade has grown steadily.
Many delegations from each country visit the other one each year, forming communication channels and "a very smooth bilateral trade relationship," Brouwer noted.
In the first half of 2017, bilateral trade surged 12.9 percent to $42.02 billion, according to data released by the EU's statistical agency in September.
