* "Romanian Chinese-commercial exchanges are disgraceful for us"
* Blănculescu: "We need to shatter the myth that the Chinese Republic is sitting on a mountain of cash, which it is ready to invest in Romania without any conditions"
The commercial exchanges between Romania and China are shameful for Romania, says Mihai Ionescu, the secretary general of the Romanian National Association of Exporters and Importers (ANEIR), who said: "They sell us devices they manufacture for all the foreign brands, toys, textile cheap goods, while we sell them raw materials, scrap iron, lumber. The exchanges we have with them are disgraceful, we are a colony to the Chinese".
In his opinion, our only chance is for the Chinese to invest in Romania: "The same way that we have succeeded to reduce the trade deficit with Russia through their investments in Romania, we have the same chance if we convince the Chinese to make massive investments on our market, from where they would export to China, as well as to other countries".
A few days ago, the officials of the two countries signed 13 memorandums for cooperation, with a total value of 8.5 billion Euros.
In this context, the businesspeople are rather skeptical that the value of the major partnerships with China would be that high. Cristian Pârvan, the secretary general of the Association of Romanian Businesspeople in Romania (AOAR), wanted to say that the foreign investments made last year in the European Union only amount to 3.5 billion Euros, of which 90% were made in the EU15 group.
He said: "We can't say that today's event (ed. note: the China-Central and Eastern Europe Economic Forum, which took place yesterday in Bucharest) is a negative thing, but things need to be reviewed with a lot more caution and a lot less optimism. A country can not replace the work and the ideas of its citizens with others
