Vice Minister Qu Dongyu met with Daryl Quinlivan, Secretary of the Department of Agriculture of Australia, in Xi'an on June 2, 2016. The two sides exchanged views on enhancing China-Australia agricultural cooperation.
Qu welcomed Quinlivan and his delegation to attend the G20 Agricultural Ministers Meeting and expressed his appreciation for supporting the meeting. Qu pointed out that China and Australia are both big agricultural countries and enjoy complementarities to each other. China has a large population and a huge market so there are great potentials for bilateral agricultural trade development. The two sides may discuss the possibility of building production bases in Australia, specifically for agricultural product export to China. Qu also encouraged agricultural businesses and research institutes of the two countries to enhance investment and technology cooperation, especially the information exchanges and S&T collaboration in dairy industry.
Daryl Quinlivan agreed with Qu and expressed his willingness to facilitate China-Australia agricultural cooperation, and strengthen S&T information exchanges and policy sharing. In particular, he said he was ready to intensify S&T collaboration with China in dairy industry and promote sustained and sound development of bilateral agricultural trade.