China and Egypt enjoy a long history of traditional relationship despite the far distance between the two countries with ancient civilizations, identical or similar views on many major international issues and common ideas, which is an good example of South-South cooperation.

As governments and leaders of both countries attach great importance to bilateral ties, Sino-Egyptian strategic and cooperative relations have been consolidated and deepened with substantial fruits.

Egypt, the first Arab and African country that recognized the People's Republic of China, established diplomatic relations with China in 1956, which marked a new era of Sino-Egyptian, Sino-Arab and Sino-African friendships.

The time-tested bilateral relations have been consolidated after more than half a century, during which the two sides achieved remarkable developments in the domains of politics, economy, trade, and culture.

China and Egypt enjoy close political relations and frequent high-level exchange visits.

During his visit to Egypt in January 2004, Chinese President Hu Jintao and his Egyptian counterpart Hosni Mubarak achieved extensive common grounds over deepening Sino-Egyptian relations in an all-around way, which pointed out the direction of the development of the bilateral relations and brought it into a new developing phase.

In June 2006, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao made a successful visit to Egypt, during which the two countries signed an implementation outline for deepening strategic and cooperative relations.

In last November, Mubarak paid his ninth visit to China and attended the Forum on Sino-African Cooperation Beijing Summit, which pushed the Sino-Egyptian strategic and cooperative relations to new heights.

As the exchange between the parliaments of the two countries, the National People's Congress (NPC) of China and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) have been keeping friendly bilateral exchanges for a long time, which played an important role in promoting and deepening the comprehensive Sino-Egyptian cooperation.

In February 2006, China and Egypt signed a memorandum of understanding to establish a regular exchange system between the NPC of China and the People's parliament of Egypt.

Both sides agreed that parliamentary exchanges are important components of the bilateral ties, and strengthening the parliamentary exchange in bilateral and multilateral level is helpful to promote understanding, strengthen mutual trust, expand common grounds and develop cooperation.

During his meeting with visiting Mubarak in November 2006, Wu Bangguo, Chairman of the Standing Committee of the NPC of China, said that the NPC of China is willing to boost friendly exchanges with the People's parliament of Egypt in all levels and scopes to benefit the two countries and their people.

For his part, Mubarak also expressed his hope that the parliaments of both countries would establish closer ties.

In regard to economic and trade cooperation, the bilateral trade and investment between the two countries increased sharply in recent years.

According to Chinese embassy statistics, the bilateral trade reached 3.19 billion U.S. dollars in 2006, up 48.8 percent year-on- year, while Chinese enterprises' investment in Egypt totalled around 300 million dollars in the sectors of oil, telecommunication and port facilities, which provides not only funds and technologies to Egypt, but also about 6,000 job opportunities.

Meanwhile, the Egyptian government has taken active measures to enhance bilateral investment, for example, the Egyptian Ministry of Trade and Industry established a Chinese Strategic Office in last October and encourages Egyptian enterprises to explore China's market and boost bilateral trade.

Moreover, Egyptian Minister of Trade and Industry Rachid Mohamed Rachid and Investment Minister Mahmoud Mohieddin expressed in many occasions that the Egyptian government welcomes more Chinese investors to invest in Egypt.

Also in the sectors of culture and education, China and Egypt enjoy flourishing exchanges and cooperation, which bridged between different civilizations in the world and made positive efforts to set up a harmonious world.

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Egypt-China ties, Chinese and Egyptian artists last year successfully hold a "hand in hand" large-scale performance at the foot of Giza Pyramids in Cairo, which received a warm response.

Moreover, more and more Egyptian universities have set up Chinese departments and the agreements on jointly establishing the first Confucius Institute in Egypt and the Egypt's Chinese University have already been signed between the two sides. " Chinese fever" and "China lover" are prevailing in Egypt at present.

Source: Xinhua