Addressing the meeting, the Foreign Minister of China said, "Just now, Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah and I co-chaired the first meeting of the committee on cooperation between the government of China and the government of the United Arab Emirates. The inception of this committee was agreed upon by President Xi Jinping and the UAE leadership as an important step to build the China-UAE Strategic Partnership and further increase mutually beneficial cooperation between the two countries. I am very happy today to launch this committee as we have now taken an important step to follow on the leaders agreements and our first meeting was very successful."

He said the two countries reached extensive consensus on the future steps to further strengthen this strategic partnership and identified cooperation in seven key areas, adding that the Chinese proposals had been warmly responded to by the foreign minister.

"We have laid out the overall plan for the future cooperation we are determined to further strengthen our strategic and political mutual trust," he noted.

He also said that China will continue to remain committed to stability and development in the Middle East as it looks at the UAE as an important strategic partner to maintain stability in the Gulf region, adding that the two countries work together to seek political settlement of regional hot-spot issues, adding that China also appreciates the continued commitment to the one China policy.

"We expressed satisfaction in the upstream and lower stream oil cooperation between the two countries, we are satisfied with the progress made and we stress the importance of further accelerating the oil and gas development cooperation in the construction of ports and the development of port-side industrial parks and other important strategic programmes to expand areas of mutually beneficial cooperation. We will work to strengthen connectivity and the upgrade of industries so that we can provide sustained inputters to our future cooperation. We will explore cooperation in some forward looking areas, for example nuclear energy power generation, clean energy, and aviation and aerospace, and we agree that there is a broad space for future cooperation and the potential is huge."

Minister Wang Yi went on to say, "We believe that it is very important to promote people-to-people and cultural exchange. As an important part of the overall relationship, we will further strengthen exchanges in education and culture and between our young people we will explore more opportunities for law enforcement and security cooperation to play a bigger role in providing facilitation and security guarantees for our people to people exchange."

He applauded the UAE's decision to grant visa exemptions for Chinese citizens holding ordinary passports, saying that this will make the travel of Chinese people easier.

"Last year, about 600,000 visits were made between the two countries and I believe that with the visa policy in place, that number will increase rapidly and soon the number will exceed 1 million."

He said that both China and the UAE support trade and investment liberalisation and facilitation and advocate open and transparent regional free trade arrangements adding that the two countries will further step up coordination and cooperation to conclude the substantive negotiations on China - GCC free trade area at an early date.

"Minister Sheikh Abdulla also updates me on the development of the situation in the Middle East and also he reaffirmed his commitment against terrorism and opposition to the radicalised thinking that is behind the spread of terrorism. I fully understand, appreciate and support what he said; China stands ready to work with the UAE and other parties to participate in international cooperation against terrorism, and at the same time we will step up exchanges and cooperation with the UAE and other countries in the Middle East and the Gulf area to fight against the spread of radicalised ideologies."

"All in all, we believe that the first meeting of this intergovernmental cooperation committee is very successful. I want to thank the UAE Foreign Minister and the officials that he has brought with him to China for their input and contribution. I believe that we can fully leverage the role of this mechanism to elevate our strategic partnership to a higher level," he concluded.

The meeting and the committee session was attended by Mohammed Sharaf Al Hashemi, Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation for Economic and Commercial Affairs

source : wam