BEIJING, April 11 (Xinhuanet) -- In the first quarter of this year, China reported 84 billion US dollars of foreign trade of high-tech products, up 26.2 percent over the same period last year, according to latest statistics from the Ministry of Commerce.

    At a press conference held Monday in Beijing on the China Hi-Tech Fair 2005, Wei Jianguo, vice minister of commerce, said that China's high-tech industry has maintained a rapid development and witnessed a booming foreign trade.

    In the January-March period this year, China's import of high-tech commodities was 40.29 billion US dollars, up 20.4 percent over the same period last year, while the export stood at 43.7 billion US dollars, up 32.3 percent.

    China Hi-Tech Fair 2005 will be held October 12-17 this year inShenzhen, a booming special economic zone bordering Hong Kong in south China's Guangdong Province. The fair, with a 135,500 square-meter exhibition area, will consist of six parts, including swapping of high-tech research results, exhibition of latest technologies, seminars and personnel exchange activities.

    Sponsored by nine state-level departments and the Shenzhen local government, the fair has been held annually since 1999.

    In the first five such fairs, 50.5 billion US dollars of business was conducted. The organizers didn't release the trade volume of the sixth fair.  Enditem