Commentary: Xi's Harare visit to create historic momentum for China-Zimbabwe cooperation

Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to arrive in Harare on Tuesday for a state visit to Zimbabwe, in a trip that is set to create historic momentum for bilateral practical cooperation.

During his stay, part of his last overseas tour this year, Xi will meet with his Zimbabwean counterpart, Robert Mugabe, and they are expected to chart the course for further advancing the friendly ties between their countries.

As a Chinese proverb goes, everything is good when new, but friends when old. China and Zimbabwe established diplomatic relations on the very day of the African country's independence on April 18, 1980.

Over the past 35 years, the two nations have always respected and unswervingly supported each other, and their relationship has been steadily consolidated.

For those attempting to discredit Beijing-Harare ties, it is time to remind them that China follows its independent, peace-oriented foreign policy, which backs African independence and development, and will not fail its good friends because of Western mudslinging.

And such claims as that China's cooperation with Africa is neo-colonization and that China's slowing economy encumbers Africa's development have been proved false over and again. They smell of a sour-grapes mentality.

In fact, Africa's booming economic cooperation with the Asian giant has become a flagship of its foreign engagement. China, now the world's second-largest economy, still contributes over 20 percent of the promising continent's economic growth.

Furthermore, Zimbabwe's national conditions suggest that the country, like Africa as a whole, needs to focus on industrialization and agricultural modernization in the near future, and in these areas China is Africa's best source of help.

China's advanced expertise and abundant resources, undergirded by its time-tested sincerity towards and bond with Africa, present Africa with great opportunities to build and improve both the hardware and the software for sustainable development.

And for China, boosting cooperation with Africa is also both a need and a win. The slack global recovery and domestic economic pressure demand that China make better use of its advantages to maintain healthy and steady growth. Expanding win-win international cooperation is a viable option.

Thus Xi's upcoming trip to Zimbabwe, which is to be followed by a state visit to South Africa and a China-Africa summit, is set to generate fresh momentum for the mutually beneficial cooperation between the world's largest developing country and the continent that is home to the largest number of developing countries.

The West, which is to a large extent responsible for Africa's current sufferings, has failed to come up with feasible solutions that could help Africa walk out of the wood and realize the dream of modernization.

Thus Western countries need to stop wasting time on smearing the win-win partnership between China and Africa. If they mean what they say about helping Africa, they should follow China's example. Endi