The National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislature, has actively promoted exchanges with foreign counterparts this year, said a senior NPC official.

The exchanges are characterized by establishing many regular exchange mechanisms, said Cao Weizhou, deputy secretary-general of the NPC Standing Committee, in a recent interview with the press.

He said the NPC has set up such exchange mechanisms with parliaments of the United States, Russia, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Canada, as well as the European Parliament.

Meanwhile, the NPC is preparing for building such mechanisms with parliaments of Britain, Australia, the Republic of Korea, India, Egypt, South Africa, Brazil and Chile, Cao said.

The number of delegations that the NPC received or sent abroad this year hit a record high, exceeding 200.

The friendly exchanges and cooperation between the NPC and foreign parliaments have made contributions to promoting people-to-people understanding, political mutual trust, reciprocal cooperation and state-to-state relations, Cao said.

China's leadership attaches great importance to inter-parliamentary exchanges. Chinese President Hu Jintao, in his meetings with over 20 foreign parliament leaders or parliamentarians this year, pointed out that such exchanges constitute an important component in state-to-state relations and help promote relations between different peoples and countries.

Chairman of the NPC Standing committee Wu Bangguo also stressed the importance of such exchanges that have added new contents to state-to-state relations.

Cao listed major achievements of NPC's foreign contacts in 2005, including high-level exchanges of visits that helped promote state-to-state relations, the positive and constructive role the NPC played in international and regional inter-parliament organizations, efforts in safeguarding sovereignty and territorial integrity and fruitful results in legislative exchanges, especially in the economic field.

The NPC gives priority to China's interests in foreign contacts and has made great efforts in various forms on such issues as human rights, Taiwan and Tibet.

The NPC will continue to push ahead with the building of a exchange mechanism with other countries next year in a bid to create a sound international environment for China's development, Cao said.

Source: Xinhua