1st LD: Landmark China-Africa summit under way, Xi to announce major cooperation measures

Chinese President Xi Jinping and dozens of African leaders kicked off here Friday a landmark summit primed to lift the time-honored win-win partnership between the world's largest developing country and the continent that is home to the largest number of developing countries to a higher level.

Xi, co-chairing the two-day gathering with South African President Jacob Zuma, will deliver a keynote speech at the opening ceremony, in which he is expected to expound the new features of China's Africa policy and announce a package of major measures designed to further deepen bilateral practical cooperation and help Africa realize independent and sustainable development.

Themed "Africa-China Progressing Together: Win-Win Cooperation for Common Development," the summit is the second of its kind under the 15-year-old framework of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), which groups China, 50 African countries that have established diplomatic ties with China, and the Commission of the African Union.

The meeting is scheduled to conclude on Saturday with the release of a declaration and an action plan that will proclaim the two sides' views on their relations as well as major regional and global issues and map out the cooperation between the world's second largest economy and "the continent of hope and promise" -- as Xi once put it -- in all areas for the coming three years.

The first summit of FOCAC, which holds a ministerial meeting every three years, took place in Beijing in 2006, during which the two sides decided to establish and develop a new type of strategic partnership featuring political equality and mutual trust, win-win economic cooperation and cultural exchanges.

In a recent address on China-Africa ties, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said the new initiatives China is about to roll out at the summit are formulated in consideration of the two most pressing development tasks in Africa's development -- industrialization and agricultural modernization -- and aimed at breaking the two major bottlenecks of backward infrastructure and talent shortage.

The measures will focus on helping Africa build its industrial, food security and public health systems and thus cope with the three major issues of employment, food and health, he said, adding that China will also launch a host of big cooperation projects to upgrade its practical cooperation with Africa.

Xi traveled to Johannesburg, the largest city in South Africa, on Thursday after wrapping up his second state visit to the African country in Pretoria. His schedule here is also packed with a series of meetings with African leaders.

South Africa is the last leg of Xi's ongoing three-nation tour, which has taken him to Paris for the opening ceremony of a highly anticipated UN climate change conference and Zimbabwe for his first state visit to the all-weather friendly country. Endi