BEIJING: President Xi Jinping has called for China and South Africa to be pacesetters for solidarity and cooperation, inheritors of China-Africa friendship and champions of common interests, saying that the countries’ ties have gone beyond the bilateral scope and carry increasingly important global influence.
Xi made the remarks in an article that he wrote for South African media, which was published on Monday, as he started a state visit to the nation and is due to attend the 15th BRICS Summit to be held in Johannesburg from Tuesday to Thursday.
While commending China-South Africa ties, Xi also expressed China’s readiness to work with its BRICS partners — Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa — to act on the BRICS spirit of openness, inclusiveness and win-win cooperation, build consensus on important issues, carry forward the tradition of independent diplomacy, and resolutely uphold international equity and justice.
This is Xi’s sixth visit to South Africa. “Each of my visits to South Africa gave me new impressions. But the deepest is invariably the brotherly sentiments we have toward each other,” Xi said in the article published by The Star, Cape Times and The Mercury newspapers as well as Independent Online, South Africa’s leading multimedia platform.
He described China-South Africa relations as one of the most vibrant bilateral relationships in the developing world. “Our relationship has entered a ‘golden era’, enjoying broad prospects and a promising future,” Xi said in the article. In recent years, strategic mutual trust between China and South Africa has been deepening steadily while cooperation in various fields has been constantly enhanced. The two nations have offered each other firm support on issues involving their respective core interests and major concerns, and maintain coordination on major international and regional issues. –The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item
