New Delhi, Oct 10 (IANS) China is willing to work with India and other countries to deal with the global financial meltdown triggered by the US subprime crisis, though it maintains that so far the impact on the Chinese economy has been “limited”.”We are closely following the global financial turbulence triggered by the subprime financial crisis in the US since August,” visiting Chinese Vice Minister of Commerce Gao Hucheng said Friday.

“China is willing to cooperate with all countries, including emerging economies like India, on ways to respond to the financial crisis and on ways to overcome the way the crisis has impacted the world,” the Chinese vice minister said.

“We hope to overcome and mitigate the crisis to a large extent with cooperation from other countries,” he added, while speaking to a select group of journalists here.

Gao is leading a large, 60-member trade and business delegation from China in its first-ever “procurement mission” to India to narrow the trade gap between the two countries. China is India’s largest trade partner and the two-way trade between the two sides is at $37.9 billion and projected to cross $40 billion by the year end. The trade imbalance is over $9 billion in China’s favour.

The Chinese vice minister, who held talks with the Commerce Minister Kamal Nath and Commerce Secretary G.K.Pillai Friday, said the two sides had also discussed the impact of the global financial crisis and the ways to deal with it.

“The Chinese capital market is still not open and, therefore, this global financial crisis has limited impact on Chinese economy,” Gao pointed out.

He said that at the moment, China’s economy was developing in a “sound and steady manner.”