5. Continuing to comply with and serve the country's overall diplomatic work and increasing the NPC's foreign contacts

The NPC's foreign contacts are an important component of the country's overall diplomatic work. We continued to comply with and serve the country's overall diplomatic work, took the particular nature of the NPC's foreign contacts as our starting point, strengthened and improved the mechanism of regular exchanges with national congresses and parliaments of other countries, and strengthened our friendly foreign contacts at all levels. All this made a positive contribution to extending the important period of strategic opportunities for China's development and promoting the building of a harmonious world with lasting peace and prosperity for all.

We successfully hosted the third meeting of the cooperation council consisting of the NPC, the Russian Federation Council, and the State Duma of Russia. The two sides reached an important consensus on strengthening their cooperation under the new circumstances and noted that their contacts should enhance mutual political trust, safeguard common interests, promote pragmatic cooperation and a common response to the global financial crisis, and carry on a lasting friendship, and lay a solid social foundation for Sino-Russian relations. We promptly invited the leader of the new US Congress to visit China, and successfully organized the first official visit to the United States by a chairman of the NPC Standing Committee in the past two decades, both of which were highly significant for promoting contacts between the two congresses and developing Sino-US relations. The two sides exchanged views on contacts between them, Sino-US relations, and other important issues of common concern. Both sides agreed that they should maintain close contact, strengthen exchanges on a regular basis, conduct multilevel friendly exchanges, deepen frank and open dialogue, expand mutual political trust, promote pragmatic cooperation, and be constructive forces for promoting the sound, steady development of Sino-US relations. We deepened our exchanges with the national parliaments and congresses of Japan, the Republic of Korea, the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Egypt, and Chile as well as with the European Parliament through the mechanism of regular exchanges, and at the same time successfully began exchanges with the French National Assembly and the Italian Senate under the same mechanism.

In accordance with the overall arrangements of the Standing Committee, members of the Chairperson's Council, special committees, executive organs of the Standing Committee, and bilateral friendship groups improved their high-level contacts and exchanges in their specific fields with national parliaments and congresses of other countries; deepened their work related to leaders of these parliaments and congresses, their members, and aides to these members; and achieved excellent results. We also actively engaged in multilateral diplomatic activities among parliaments and congresses and played a constructive role in the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the Asia-Pacific Parliamentary Forum, the Latin American Parliament, and other international and regional parliamentary organizations.

During our dealings with foreign contacts, especially those with Western parliaments and congresses, we repeatedly pointed out that it is entirely understandable that different countries have different views, even disagreements, on some issues due to the differences in their history, culture, stages of development, social systems, and ideology. Countries with disagreements may sit down and talk about them, and if they are temporarily unable to reach agreement then they can at least increase their mutual understanding. Disagreements should not become obstacles to cooperation; nor can they be allowed to serve as a pretext for interfering in the internal affairs of other countries. We believe in promoting democracy in international relations, respecting the diversity of the world and the rights of peoples of all countries to independently choose their development paths, and refraining from interfering in other countries' internal affairs and imposing one's will upon others. We oppose the support or disguised support for separatist forces advocating the independence of Taiwan and Tibet, and the "East Turkistan" separatist forces under the pretext of freedom of speech and religious beliefs to interfere in China's internal affairs. We remain committed to developing friendly cooperation with all countries based on the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence. We stress that mutual respect for national sovereignty and territorial integrity and respect and consideration for each other's core interests are the political bases upon which China establishes and develops relations with foreign countries and international organizations. On this point, we will never change.