China, Africa map out strategic vision for win-win cooperation with practical action plan
Chinese President Xi Jinping and African leaders rounded off a landmark summit here Saturday with a unanimous consensus to upgrade China-Africa relations backed by a roadmap for further boosting mutually beneficial cooperation and common development.
The leaders’ meeting, officials and observers from across the region say, has not only ushered the world’s second-largest country and “most promising continent” into a new era of common development, but once again testified to China’s brotherly friendship and genuine partnership with Africa.
In his concluding remarks at the summit, the second of the 15-year-old Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), Xi announced that he and the dozens of participating African leaders reached a unanimous agreement to lift the China-Africa relationship to a comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership.
The upgrade, proposed by Xi on Friday in a keynote speech at the opening ceremony, came nine years after China and African countries decided at the first FOCAC summit in Beijing to establish a new type of China-Africa strategic partnership featuring political equality and mutual trust, economic win-win cooperation and cultural exchange.
In support of the historic progress, African leaders endorsed Xi’s appeal to strengthen the five “major pillars” of political equality and mutual trust, win-win economic cooperation, mutually enriching cultural exchanges, mutual assistance in security, and solidarity and coordination in international affairs.
To realize the upgrade, the two sides also agreed to carry out 10 major cooperation plans in the next three years in the areas of industrialization, agricultural modernization, infrastructure construction, financial services, green development, trade and investment facilitation, poverty reduction and public welfare, public health, people-to-people exchanges, and peace and security.
