“China and Iraq share friendly relations, as a sincere friend China actively participates in Iraq and the reconstruction of the country,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin told Rudaw’s Mahdi Faraj in a Beijing press briefing.
Wenbin added that China’s presence in Iraq has been “well received by the government and the people.”
“We are ready to work with Iraq for further progress,” he said.
China opened its consulate in Erbil in 2014 and has become one of Iraq’s largest trade partners in the region. In a 2021 interview with Rudaw, former Chinese Commercial Consul to Erbil Li Qingsheng said that Iraq was China’s “third largest trading partner in West Asia and North Africa with a bilateral trade volume of $30.1 billion”, adding that China has imported more than 60 million tons of crude oil from Iraq the previous year.
Trade between China and Iraq reached around $50 billion last year. Beijing is also the biggest importer of Iraqi oil.
.jpg&w=3840&q=75)
