BEIJING: Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visits to Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan opened a new chapter for building a new type of international relations and a community with a shared future for mankind, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Monday.
During the five-day trip, Xi also attended the 19th summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Bishkek and the fifth summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) in Dushanbe.
It was a visit of cementing good neighborliness and friendship, of jointly building the Belt and Road, of promoting the Shanghai Spirit, and of guiding Asian countries’ cooperation, Wang said.
China and Central Asian countries, including Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, are connected by mountains and rivers and have a shared future, Wand said.
Xi’s state visits to Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, he added, demonstrated the close friendship between the heads of state and the high level of China’s ties with the two countries.
As the world is undergoing profound changes unseen in a century, China and Central Asian countries are confronting common development and security challenges, and need to build closer cooperative relations to better safeguard their respective and common interests, Wang added.
At the SCO summit, Xi called for concerted efforts to build the regional organization into a model mechanism of regional cooperation against the backdrop of the complicated international situation.
Xi’s vision drew positive responses from other participating leaders, Wang said, adding that they also agreed to carry forward the Shanghai Spirit, promote cooperation in such fields as security, economy and people-to-people exchanges.
Xi’s idea, said Wang, represented a broad consensus on the future development trend of Asia, enriched the connotation and denotation of the CICA, and provided both philosophical and directional guidance for regional cooperation.
At the two summits, Xi called on member states to implement the consensus reached the Second Belt and Road Forum (BRF) for International Cooperation and further synergize the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and their respective development strategies.
Central Asia is where the BRI was initiated, Wang said, adding that Xi’s visits to Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan once again showed that China is taking concrete actions to push forward the Belt and Road construction at a higher starting point.
