China and New Zealand have agreed to start first round talks to upgrade their bilateral free trade agreement (FTA) in the first half of 2017, adding the service trade, e-commerce and agricultural cooperation, China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) said. Other issues including market competition policies, trade technical barriers, customs procedures, trade facilitation measures and rules of origin will also be negotiated next year. The bilateral trade agreement was signed in 2008. China is now New Zealand’s top trading partner. Bilateral trade was worth USD12.82 billion in 2015, up 1.2% on a year-on-year basis. Unlike free trade agreements between China and Australia and China and South Korea signed in 2015, the existing China-New Zealand FTA lacks articles on services and investment. In addition, exports from New Zealand account for 70% of China’s dairy imports, and China now stands to benefit from the China-Australia FTA by getting cheaper products in the same category. Liu Chenyang, Researcher at the APEC Study Center at Nankai University in Tianjin, said New Zealand, therefore, is keen to talk about dairy products as part of the upgrade. Tourism is another key area of competition between New Zealand and Australia. One million Chinese people traveled to Australia as tourists in 2015, and 400,000 traveled to New Zealand, 42% more than the year before, the China Daily reports.