US governor of California calls for more cooperation with China

LOS ANGELES - US Governor of California Jerry Brown called for more cooperation with China on Thursday, saying that the two countries have great potential as trade partners.

Brown made the remarks during the 2018 California-China Business Summit, an annual conference attracting hundreds of government and industry representatives from both China and the United States.

The 2018 California-China Business Summit, the third of its kind, aims to promote California's trade and investment cooperation with Chinese provinces under the framework of a MOU signed by Brown and his Chinese counterparts during his trade mission to Beijing in 2013.

"We all learn from each other and globalization is here. We are not going to get rid of it," said Brown at the business summit held at the Beverly Hilton hotel.

The governor said that China and the United States should work together to promote the global economy despite rising tensions due to the trade dispute between the two countries recently.

"A trade war is stupid," he added.

Brown himself had participated in the previous two summits.

"Last year, trade between California and China reached $175.6 billion, an increase of almost 20 percent over the figure of $146.8 billion in 2013, ranking California first among the 50 states of the United States," said Zhang Ping, Chinese consul general in Los Angeles, noting that the last five years have seen fruitful results in trade and investment cooperation between California and Chinese provinces.

"In promoting China-US trade relations, cooperation between provinces and states plays an indispensable role," said Zhu Hong, minister for commercial affairs at the Chinese Embassy in Washington.

"California has become the pioneer in cooperation between states and provinces," he added.

China is now California's largest trade partner, the largest source of imports and the third-largest export market.

The 2018 California-China Business Summit is co-organized by the Milken Institute, CHINAWEEK which is a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing understanding of and access to China, and the China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Machinery and Electronic Products.