The second Arab-Chinese business conference opened in Amman Monday with the participation of 800 delegates to discuss means of coping with huge horizons for rapidly expanding economic ties between the two sides, according to dpa. The two-day conference, held under the slogan of "Deepening Cooperation, Partners in Prosperity", is the first Arab-Chinese business meeting of its kind to be held in an Arab capital after the first conference which convened in Peking in 2005. Opening the conference, Jordanian Finance Minister Ziyad Fariz put the volume of merchandise between the Arab world and China at 65 billion dollars in 2006, a figure he said referred to the "promising prospects" for expanding bilateral economic ties. He underlined the importance of "intensifying contacts between Arab and Chinese businessmen to make benefit from China's experiment that succeeded in building up a strong economic entity and achieving an average growth rate of 9 per cent over the past two decades". Fariz called for expanding Chinese investments in the Arab World "through the setting up of marathon joint projects for the transfer of the Chinese technology to the Arab area".