China Focus: Top legislator's visit to strengthen China-Africa ties

China's top legislator Zhang Dejiang started a ten-day trip to Zambia, Rwanda and Kenya on Friday, a visit that is expected to strengthen China-African cooperation and ties.

Chinese senior leaders have paid several official visits to Africa since the current leadership took office in late 2012, bringing achievements in bilateral ties.

China's frequent interactions with Africa have sent a strong message that the world's largest developing country and the continent with the largest number of developing countries together make up a community of common destiny.

Sino-African diplomatic ties date back 60 years, and the deep bonds of friendship, mutual trust and support between the two sides remain unchanged, said Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi at a press conference on the sidelines of this year's national legislature's annual session, which concluded on Wednesday.

At the second summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) held in Johannesburg, South Africa in December, China and African countries agreed to lift their relations to a comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership.

For the past three-plus years, China has been committed to African countries in their poverty alleviation efforts.

China has provided African countries with loans worth over 20 billion U.S. dollars since 2012 to support infrastructure, investment, small- and medium-sized enterprises, agriculture and manufacturing.

At the Johannesburg summit, China announced the establishment of 10 major plans for China-Africa cooperation to help the continent speed up industrialization and agricultural modernization and to strengthen infrastructure.

China also pledged to provide 60 billion dollars in financial assistance to Africa, including 10 billion dollars for a China-Africa production capacity cooperation fund.

Just three months after the summit, China has been in contact with more than 20 African countries to follow up on the outcomes of the summit, with a number of items soon to materialize and the China-Africa fund for production capacity cooperation now up and running, Wang said at the press conference held on March 8.

The Chinese government has also rolled out about 900 assistance programs in Africa for agriculture, health, education and other fields and has offered training to more than 30,000 local people since 2012.

Since the Ebola outbreak last year, China has delivered more than 117 million dollars' worth of humanitarian aid and sent hundreds of medical workers to the front lines in Ebola-stricken West Africa.

China announced at the Johannesburg summit that it will provide more training and educational opportunities to Africa to help solve the continent's talent shortage.

As part of the efforts to promote cultural and people-to-people exchanges between China and Africa, the Chinese government has also offered support for more direct flights between China and Africa, and promised to provide assistance in building five cultural centers for Africa.

"We expect that Zhang's trip will deepen exchanges between China and Africa, bringing closer ties and, more importantly, turning the agreements and plans of previous visits into tangible results," said Jia Xiudong, researcher with the China Institute of International Studies. Endi