Senior Chinese diplomat highlights 3 characteristics on China's African policy

China's African policy has three characteristics, including political friendship and equality, economic cooperation, and mutual understanding and support on world issues, a senior Chinese diplomat said.

Lu Guozeng, Chinese assistant foreign minister, made the remarks in an interview with Xinhua after China released its first policy paper toward Africa Thursday in Beijing.

According to Lu, the paper has made a comprehensive plan on the future development and key fields of China-Africa friendly cooperation in the new era.

"China will establish a new type of strategic partnership characterized as political equality and mutual trust, economic win-win cooperation and frequent cultural exchange", Lu said.

He pointed out that the key characteristic among the three of China's African policy is political equality, noting that Chinese leaders of different generations all visited Africa many times and shared profound friendship with those African leaders.

Chinese foreign minister always chooses Africa as his first overseas visit destination since 1991, and despite their country's size and wealth, leaders of various African countries are all accorded the same highest courteous receptions, Lu said, explaining that the treatment China offers to its African friends helps the country establish a good image as the biggest developing country and friendship with African countries.

China also values economic cooperation of mutual benefit with African countries, Lu said, adding that China has offered its help to African countries for years.

"China always provides assistance to those prior projects in African countries without any political conditions", Lu said, stressing that China never intends to intervene in the internal affairs of African countries by leveraging economic assistance, which has been perfectly witnessed by the international community.

China-Africa economic and trade cooperation has brought concrete benefits to both sides. The latest statistics showed that the two-way trade climbed to almost 40 billion U.S. dollars at the end of 2005 from only 12.11 million U.S. dollars in the 1950s, Lu added.

China and African countries also forged another strong tradition of supporting each other in the international affairs, Lu said, highlighting that China and African countries share broad common interests as profound changes occurred with the situation of the international community, and inside their countries in the past half century, which helps further cement the foundation of China-Africa cooperation in various fields.

China supports the peace and development on the African continent and plays an active role in the peacekeeping operations in Africa, Lu said, citing the figures that China has sent 3,000 peacekeepers to the 12 operations since 1990 and now the country still deploys 850 peacekeepers in eight African countries.

China-Africa cooperation also witnessed a rapid growth in fields such as education, agriculture, culture, health care and tourism in recent years, the diplomat said, adding that China will hold a summit of Chinese and African leaders in Beijing in the autumn of this year.

The China-Africa summit is to coincide with the third ministerial meeting of the China-Africa Forum, which was founded in Beijing in 2000. Lu said China is making active efforts to prepare for the summit and ministerial meeting. "We earnestly expect African leaders to attend and jointly discuss long-term plans of China-Africa cooperation," Lu said.

Lu said that China tries to spread a very important message to the international community by releasing its first African policy paper on the occasion of the 50th anniversary year of forging its first diplomatic relations with an African country, Egypt, on May 30, 1956. Now China has established diplomatic relations with 47 out of 53 African countries.

"China attaches vital importance to the ties with African countries and will continue to strengthen bilateral cooperation under new circumstances to score common prosperity", Lu stressed.

Source: Xinhua