China set to offer more assistance to developing nations

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao meets participants attending the national conference on economic relations with developing nations held during August 31-September 1 in Beijing.

China has decided to build more facilities closely related to people's daily life in the developing countries and send more medical teams there in the coming years.

The decision was made at a national conference on economic relations with developing nations that ended Wednesday, Sept. 2, in Beijing.

China will also provide more emergency aid to the developing nations, train more professionals for them, encourage more firms to invest in the developing countries and try to solve the problem of trade imbalance that some developing nations have complained about.

"We must uphold the principles of mutual respect, treating each other equally, integrate good political relations with economic cooperation, mutual benefit, common development, and seeking concrete results in economic cooperation when advancing relations with the vast majority of the developing nations," said Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao Tuesday when he met with the participants of the conference.

About 400 Chinese provincial-level officials and diplomats attended the two-day conference. Chinese Vice-Premier Wu Yi and State Councilor Tang Jiaxuan addressed the conference.

China started to provide assistance to Africa and some other developing countries in the 1950s. The latest conference, held in accordance with the call of Chinese President Hu Jintao several days ago that "economic diplomacy" should be strengthened, was aimed at summing up its assistance to the developing nations and sketching out its blueprint for the coming years.

Wen called the developing nations China's "reliable friends" and "friends in deed," saying the cooperation with the developing countries is a "basic point" of China's diplomacy.

China must support the development of the developing nations in the course of its own advancement, he stressed.