Mexico and China will explore more mutually beneficial ways in 2021, especially through trade and investment, a senior Mexican official has said.

China was the only major economy to register positive economic growth in 2020, and the country also fits perfectly with Mexico's trade policies of innovation, inclusion and diversification, said Luz Maria de la Mora, undersecretary for foreign trade at Mexico's Economy Ministry, in a recent interview with Xinhua.

"That is why we seek to strengthen our presence in China through exports and investments, and we also want to have a greater presence from China, which is a growing, innovative economy that complements ours," de la Mora said.

According to the Mexican government, total trade volume between Mexico and China reached 80 billion U.S. dollars in 2020, with Mexican exports growing at a rate of more than 11 percent.

De la Mora said that the COVID-19 pandemic has strengthened bilateral cooperation in the medical sector, not only in terms of the possibility of receiving vaccines from China, but also in health equipment and materials.

E-commerce is another new route for bilateral cooperation, de la Mora said. "One of the lessons this pandemic has taught us is the value of digitalization and the use of information technologies and different technologies, not only for e-commerce, but also for services such as education and healthcare, among many others."

"We see a great opportunity for collaboration with China (in this area) because we have seen the way China has developed very important initiatives and platforms for us as a reference," she said, citing as an example Chinese online trading platform Alibaba, which offers training for small and medium-sized Mexican companies.

"We have seen that companies established in China, with Chinese capital, are coming to Mexico to establish themselves in order to participate in the Latin American chain," she said.