On the afternoon of November 21, 2004, Chinese President Hu Jintao met with his Mexican counterpart Vincente Fox in Santiago.

Hu made positive remarks on China-Mexico strategic partnership, noting that currently political mutual trust is further enhanced, exchanges and cooperation on economy, trade, culture, science, technology and tourism keep expanding and both sides conduct sound cooperation in international affairs. China thanks Mexico for support on the issues related to Taiwan and human rights and would like to join hands with the Mexican side to push for the continuous development of bilateral strategic partnership.

Fox said that the frequent meetings between leaders of the two countries strengthen mutual understanding and trust and inject new vitality into bilateral ties. Mexico is paying attention to China's economic development and contributions to the world trade development in an active manner and commits to cooperation with China.

The two leaders exchanged views mainly on developing bilateral economic and trade ties. Hu said that economic and trade relations are an important part of China-Mexico ties. The Chinese government attaches great importance to cooperation with Mexico in trade and investment. In recent years, bilateral trade has grown rapidly, the government departments of the two countries have actively promoted the development of bilateral trade relations and mutual investment and the business communities of the two countries have further enhanced dialogue and exchanges. China encourages enterprises with reputation, strength and advantages to invest in Mexico so as to translate the aspiration of leaders and government departments of the two countries to develop bilateral economic and trade cooperation into concrete actions. We hope to work along with Mexico to seek positive trade balance and realize a win-win situation through expanded economic and trade cooperation.

Fox noted that Mexico expects to further strengthen bilateral economic and trade cooperation. To this end, Mexico supports China to accede to the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), actively discusses developing bilateral tourist cooperation and opening direct routes and hopes that more Chinese businesses can make full use of Mexico's favorable investment environment and policy to conduct investment cooperation in the area of export processing. Meanwhile, Mexico encourages its business community to actively conduct trade with China and promote two-way investment, so as to push for the development of mutually beneficial cooperation in the economic and trade area.