President Hu Jintao has said that China needs to optimize its foreign trade structure and raise its export competitiveness, urging Chinese manufacturers and exporters to adopt a new strategy of "winning by quality".

"Special focus should be put on optimizing China's foreign trade structure, to have more high-quality and hi-tech products, high value-added products and home-developed products manufactured and exported," said Hu while addressing a workshop in Beijing Tuesday attended by China's top-ranking officials.

Hu said that since China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO), the country's domestic and international markets have been more and more closely linked, and the interaction between domestic economy and global economy has also been intensified remarkably.

"This has not only brought about rare opportunities for, but also posed severe challenges to our country's reform and development," he said.

"We must adapt ourselves to the new development trends of economic globalization, endorse a global development strategy and take an active part in international economic and technological cooperation and competition," he said.

It is the requirement of a "scientific view of development" that China should adopt a new export strategy of "winning by quality" by raising the export competitiveness of its products and improving the quality and efficiency of its foreign trade, said the president.

He also stressed that China should open still wider to the outside world by both attracting more foreign investment and encouraging more domestic businesses to invest and operate overseas.

The Tuesday workshop, attended by members of the elite Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC), was designed to help top Chinese leaders learn about the new features of economic globalization and international trade.