ACC Secretary-General Met with Director-General of Yunnan FAO

On 26 October 2015, ASEAN-China Centre (ACC) Secretary-General H.E. Mme. Yang Xiuping met with Ms. Zhou Hong, Director-General of the Foreign Affairs Office (FAO) of the People’s Government of Yunnan Province, in Kunming, Yunnan Province. Mr. Ma Jun, Director of the Office of International and Regional Cooperation of Yunnan, also attended the meeting.

Secretary-General Yang introduced ACC’s work, saying that ACC had been actively implementing the consensus reached by the leaders ofASEAN and China, and supporting the “Belt and Road” initiative as well as the “2+7” Cooperation Framework. Since its establishment, ACC had accomplished more than 70 projects, organized or participated in almost 400 activities, which contributed to the development of ASEAN-China Strategic Partnership. Currently, ASEAN-China Strategic Partnership had entered the “Diamond Decade”. 2016 would mark the 25th anniversary of ASEAN-China dialogue relations, as well as the Year of ASEAN-China Education Exchange. As the frontier of ASEAN-China friendly cooperation, Yunnan Province had done abundant work and made substantial achievements in the all-round cooperation between ASEAN and China. ACC was ready to work closely with Yunnan FAO and jointly enhance ASEAN-China and Yunnan-ASEAN pragmatic cooperation.

Director-General Zhou Hong said that Yunnan was connected with ASEAN countries by mountains and rivers, and shared geographical proximity and cultural similarities. Yunnan bordered Laos, Myanmar and Viet Nam, sharing over 4,000-kilometer land borders, and was close to Thailand and Cambodia. As a major province in China participating in the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS) Economic Cooperation, Yunnan had extended and deepened cooperation with countries in the Sub-region in transportation, agriculture, tourism, environmental protection, trade and investment, human resource development as well as drug control. The three-dimensional traffic network had been established between Yunnan and ASEAN countries. Director-General Zhou Hong expressed gratitude to ACC for its strong support and assistance in strengthening cooperation between Yunnan and ASEAN. She also expected that Yunnan would get ACC’s continued support to further participate in ASEAN-Chinacooperation, especially in trade, investment, logistics, finance, education and people-to-people exchanges, so as to better serve the strategies of the“Belt and Road” and “building Yunnan as China’s radiation hub to South Asia and Southeast Asia”, and achieve more fruitful progress in opening up.