China will further open up to the outside world and improve its business environment while welcoming foreign companies, including those from the United States, Premier Li Keqiang said on Friday.

Li made the remark when meeting with a delegation from US company Exxon-Mobil that was headed by its chairman and CEO, Darren Woods.

Healthy development of two-way investments between China and the US is beneficial to both sides as well as to the recovery of the global economy and stable growth of international trade, Li said. Countries should make joint efforts to safeguard trade liberalization and investment facilitation, and China welcomes ExxonMobil to invest in large petrochemical projects, he said.

China will further lower the threshold for market access, treat domestic and foreign companies equally and better protect intellectual property rights, Li said. He called on companies from other countries to seize the opportunity and boost cooperation with China under market rules and business principles.

US companies that have invested in China should be aware that China is a huge market and they have been rewarded with fair returns, the premier said. The US business community, including ExxonMobil, should expand its investment in China and offer objective voices toward China's reform and opening-up, he said.

ExxonMobil, which is ranked ninth on this year's Fortune Global 500 list, started operating in China in 1892 as Standard Oil and has invested $2.5 billion in China in the past few decades, Woods said. Woods, also chairman of the American Petroleum Institute and a member of the National Petroleum Council of the US, is on a trip to China for talks on a sole-venture petrochemical project in Guangdong province worth $10 billion.

Woods said he appreciates China's measures in further opening up, improving the business environment and protecting intellectual property rights, and is willing to help promote China's manufacturing sector with world-leading technologies.

Chinese leaders have recently reiterated the reform and opening-up policy on various occasions, and a number of deals have been inked by foreign companies this year to make large investments in China.

In May, the German chemical company BASF SE, also a Fortune Global 500 company, signed a deal with China to build a solely owned petrochemical factory with investment of $10 billion in Zhanjiang, Guangdong.