Trade between Malaysia and China is well on track to achieve the target of 36 billion U.S. dollars this year, a Chinese official said Thursday.

For the first ten months, total trade value between the two countries amounted to 30.1 billion dollars, said Lu Kejian, Director General for Asian Affairs Department, China's Ministry of Commerce.

"We are confident that the figure will keep increasing and could reach the total trade target of 50 billion dollars in 2010, as set by the two countries, faster than the time frame," he said at a press conference at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Center.

Lu made the remarks after the opening ceremony of the Chinese Export Commodities Exhibition and Investment Conference (Malaysia) 2006.

The trade target was set earlier by leaders of the two countries.

When talking about the investment between the two countries, Lu said the Chinese government has always encouraged Chinese entrepreneurs to invest in Malaysia and cooperate with Malaysian businessmen.

"With further improvement of bilateral trade and investment environment, I believe investment between China and Malaysia will keep increasing," he said.

The exhibition and conference, sponsored by Ministry of Commerce of China and organized by China Foreign Trade Center, is going on here until Sunday.

In 2005, China was Malaysia's fourth largest trading partner and Malaysia was the eighth largest trading partner for China.