A total of 12 agreements worth 364 million U.S. dollars were signed between enterprises from China's eastern Zhejiang province and its U.S. sister state Indiana at a business symposium in Indianapolis on Monday.

Nearly 200 business leaders from a Chinese delegation led by Zhao Hongzhu, chief of the Zhejiang Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China, attended the Indiana-Zhejiang Investment & Trade Symposium.

Addressing the symposium, Zhao said Zhejiang and Indiana have maintained a sound relationship for 25 years thanks to the pioneering spirit and innovative minds of the two countries' entrepreneurs and the spirit of service of the governments.

Zhao hoped the symposium could help further strengthen their relationship and promote both sides' industrial upgrading.

An example of the closer business ties is that cooperation between Zhejiang's Wanxiang Group Corporation and Indiana's EnerDel has created more than 1,300 jobs in Indiana.

Indiana Governor Mitchell Daniels said Indiana and Zhejiang now enjoy closer ties than ever before.

"In today's economy, a good test of a great state is whether it can participate in the trade and two-way exchange with China," said the governor, "Indiana is determined to be the state to do that."

Representatives from more than 130 enterprises and 18 investment-promoting institutions from Zhejiang, covering areas of agriculture, alternative energy technology, automobiles and electronics, joined a business meeting with their Indiana partners on the sidelines of the symposium, and agreements on 12 projects were signed.

Yang Guoqiang, China's consul general in Chicago, hailed the successful cooperation between the two sides.

Zhejiang and Indiana established a sister-state relationship in 1987 and Governor Daniels led an Indiana delegation to Zhejiang Province in 2009 and 2010.