2010-10-26 10:18

SHANGHAI - China and Indonesia eyed a $50 billion trade volume before 2015 while signing cooperation agreements ranging from infrastructure, creative industry to intellectual property rights protection.

At a China-Indonesia business forum in Shanghai Monday, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said Indonesia and China have shown strong capacity to weather the financial crisis, but called for more trade and investment partnership, given the fragile international economic recovery.

The two countries signed more than 20 cooperation documents at the forum, covering steel, infrastructure, agriculture, high technology, creative industry and intellectual property rights protection.

Two-way trade between Indonesia and China stood at $1.18 billion by 1990. It increased sharply to $31.5 billion by 2008, according to Chinese Ambassador to Indonesia Zhang Qiyue.

China becomes the second largest trade partner to Indonesia now, the ambassador said at a seminar on the China-Indonesia relations last month.

Yudhoyono highlighted Indonesian and Chinese animation enterprises' joint filming of Zheng He, a Chinese admiral in the Ming Dynasty, who led fleets to arrive in Indonesia some 600 years ago.

"The filming is symbolic. Zheng brought us trade and cultural exchanges based on peace, which we are now trying to dig deeper," Yudhoyono said.

The president's visit coincides with the 60th anniversary of bilateral ties and the fifth year of strategic relationship. He visited the Indonesian pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo Monday.