Met with Prime Minister of the Netherlands Mark Rutte

President Xi Jinping meets with Prime Minister of the Netherlands Mark Rutte, who is paying a working visit to China, at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, March 27, 2024. 

President Xi Jinping meets with Prime Minister of the Netherlands Mark Rutte, who is paying a working visit to China, at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, March 27, 2024. (Xinhua/Li Xueren)

President Xi Jinping pointed out that in recent years, China Netherlands relations have developed steadily and rapidly, and cooperation in various fields between the two countries has continued to deepen. The Netherlands has become a true gateway to China Europe cooperation. China is willing to maintain exchanges at all levels with the Netherlands, adhere to communication and dialogue, adhere to mutual benefit and win-win, and promote the continuous development of China Netherlands open and pragmatic comprehensive cooperative partnership. China is willing to expand the import of high-quality goods from the Netherlands, welcomes Dutch enterprises to invest in China, and hopes that the Netherlands can provide a fair and transparent business environment for Chinese enterprises. Both sides should actively promote traditional cooperation in agriculture, water conservancy, energy, and other fields, while tapping into the potential for cooperation in areas such as artificial intelligence, green transformation, and the silver economy. We hope that both sides will continue to take more measures to facilitate personnel exchanges and encourage educational, cultural, and civil exchanges. China is willing to strengthen communication and coordination with the Netherlands in multilateral institutions such as the United Nations and the World Trade Organization to jointly address global challenges such as climate change and biodiversity.

President Xi Jinping emphasized that economic globalization may encounter headwinds, but the historical trend will not change. There is no way out for decoupling and breaking the chain, and open cooperation is the only option. The Chinese side has always believed that the binary oppositional thinking of "you lose, I win" and "black or white" is outdated. The truly safe world should be a deeply integrated and interdependent world. Artificially creating technological barriers and severing the industrial and supply chains will only lead to division and opposition. The Chinese people also have the right to legitimate development, and no force can stop the pace of China's technological progress. China will always uphold the concept of win-win, continue to expand high-level opening-up to the outside world, and share development dividends with all parties. China maintains continuous stability in its policy towards Europe and regards Europe as an important pole and partner in a multipolar world. I hope the Netherlands will continue to play a positive role in promoting mutual understanding and developing constructive relations between China and Europe.

President Xi Jinping meets with Prime Minister of the Netherlands Mark Rutte, who is paying a working visit to China, at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, March 27, 2024. (Xinhua/Zhai Jianlan)

Prime Minister Mark Rutte stated that my first visit to China as Prime Minister in 2013, especially since we jointly announced the establishment of an open and pragmatic comprehensive partnership between the Netherlands and China with the President Xi Jinping in 2014, has led to good development of bilateral relations, doubling trade volume, and presenting enormous potential and prospects for bilateral cooperation. "Decoupling and breaking the chain" is not a policy option for the Dutch government, as any actions that harm China's development interests will also harm itself. Thank you to the Chinese side for providing Dutch citizens with 15 days of visa free treatment in China. The Netherlands values its friendly relations with China and is willing to continue deepening its partnership with China, facilitating personnel exchanges, strengthening cooperation in areas such as economy, trade, and carbon emissions reduction, and closely communicating and coordinating on multilateral occasions such as the G20 and international and regional hot topics.

Wang Yi attended the meeting.