China, Africa 'must work together'
Bathandwa Mbola
19 January 2009
China is looking to boost cooperation with African countries in coping with the current global economic crisis, while it will also continue to provide assistance for African countries.
This was according to Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, who was meeting with South African Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma outside Cape Town on Monday, in their fourth encounter in the past 12 months.
Yang was in South Africa on his final leg of a four-country visit to the continent, which was preceded by visits to Uganda, Rwanda and Malawi.
The two discussed various issues, mostly on economics and changing global dynamics, as well as working together to develop the African continent.
"Like China, Africa is also a victim of the financial crisis, so China and African countries should work together," Yang said, calling on the two countries to make a joint effort in dealing with the financial crisis and contribute to global economic stability.
"I believe, we should have very good co-ordination during international meetings to ensure that the meetings will lead to positive, important results which will benefit the maintenance of the growth trend in the world, to ensure that there is still enough input into development, to ensure that the international financial system will be reformed in such a way to benefit the developing countries," he told the media briefing.
Mutually beneficial cooperation
Yang said China was willing to step up exchanges and coordination with South Africa on international and regional issues, and promote mutually beneficial economic and trade cooperation.
"We believe that Africa should be well represented in international financial meetings," he said. "It is a very important voice which needs to be heard and respected."
China and South Africa have witnessed rapid development of their strategic cooperative partnership in recent years.
"The past decade has been very good and we are now planning for the second decade in our relations and we are confident that the second decade will be even better because we have learnt lots of lessons and laid a good foundation so we are ready to take off in the next decade," Dlamini-Zuma said.
She assured her Chinese counterpart that the general elections were unlikely to change the country's political scene. "New parties have emerged but still we think at the end of elections nothing will change much," Dlamini-Zuma told Yang.
Yearly visit to Africa
For over a decade now, China's foreign minister has begun the New Year with a visit to Africa.
Yang's visit aims to strengthen relations with African countries, as China seeks to further extend its influence on the resource-rich continent, mainly through extending billions of dollars in loans towards infrastructure development.
South Africa is China's key trading partner in Africa, accounting for 20.8% of the total volume of China-Africa trade in 2007.
Source: BuaNews
