Full coverage: G20 Hangzhou Summit

The G20 Trade Ministers Meeting will be held in Shanghai this weekend. The ministers will address trade issues and investment cooperation among other topics.

The Shanghai G20 trade ministers’ meeting will be very key to find new ways to reinvigorate world trade and investment.

Global trade through 2015 slowed for the first time in 4 decades. And investment has yet to recover to the level before the 2008 global financial crisis.

This weekend's meeting will be one of the most important ministerial-level meetings before the G20 summit in September, when leaders will gather in Hangzhou to discuss how to build an innovative, invigorated, interconnected and inclusive global economy.

Trade ministers will focus on topics on the mechanism development of G20 trade and investment. These include how to boost growth of world trade, support multilateral trade mechanism, improve the coordination and cooperation in investment trade policies and encourage the inclusive and coordinated global value chain.

The first priority is to find a more effective working mechanism among members. You know, to coordinate trade and investment among 20 economies cannot be done by a routinely-held minister-level meeting.

So the trade and investment working group was established after the Antalya summit last year, which was proposed by China. Just on Wednesday and Thursday, the working group conducted its third meeting in Shanghai to figure out its role and make final preparations for the meetings starting tomorrow.

The ministers will also discuss drafting a G20 global trade growth strategy, to improve trade governance and reduce costs of global trade. Key work is to improve policy coordination, promote services trade, improve trade finance, boost e-commerce and initiate a global trade perspective index. The index is scheduled to launch later this evening.

After the two-day meeting, Chinese Ministry of Commerce, the host of the meeting, will brief the media on the consensus to be reached and how the world’s most important 20 economies are working together to reinvigorate growth.