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BEIJING, July 4-- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang's upcoming visits to Bulgaria and Germany will boost the comprehensive development of China-Europe relations, according to experts with leading think tanks. Li will pay official visits to Bulgaria and Germany and attend the seventh leaders' meeting of China and Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries in Sofia, and hold the fifth round of intergovernmental consultations between China and Germany from July 5 to 10. The 16+1 cooperation, a voluntary cross-regional cooperation framework between China and 16 CEE countries, was established in 2017 and has led to fast development in trade and investment. The trade volume between China and the 16 CEE countries reached 68 billion U.S. dollars last year, up 15.9 percent year on year, according to the Ministry of Commerce. Cui Hongjian, head of the Department for European Studies at the China Institute of International Studies, said the 16+1 cooperation at local levels has great potential to be discovered during Li's visit. Identifying the 16+1 cooperation as an inseparable and beneficial part of China-Europe cooperation, Cui suggested that the experience gained from 16+1 cooperation could be further promoted and applied in cooperation with other European countries. Liu Zuokui, director of the Department of Central and Eastern European Studies under the Institute of European Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, also agreed that the 16+1 cooperation mechanism would contribute to the development of the China-Europe partnership. | 
