ACC Secretary-General Met with Deputy Director-Generals of Yunnan Foreign Affairs Office

On 1 December 2015, ASEAN-China Centre (ACC) Secretary-General H.E. Mme. Yang Xiuping met with Mr. Wang Wei and Mr. Xia Jianfeng, Deputy Director-Generals of the Foreign Affairs Office (FAO) of the People’s Government of Yunnan Province, in Kunming, Yunnan Province. 

Mr. Wang Wei and Mr. Xia Jianfeng briefed on the achievements of Yunnan Province since the introduction of the reform and opening-up policy and recent accomplishments of exchanges and cooperation with ASEAN countries. They opined that Yunnan’s geographical advantage given by its adjacency with Laos, Myanmar and Viet Nam made it a major province to facilitate the “Belt and Road” initiative. In recent years, Yunnan had been playing an active role in the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS) Economic Cooperation and had forged a series of mechanisms of multilateral and bilateral cooperation with relevant countries, yielding fruitful results. In the next step, Yunnan would focus on building itself into a regional economic centre with an open economic structure and more actively participate in the practical cooperation within the GMS framework. The Deputy Director-Generals expected that Yunnan would get ACC’s continued support to further develop its relations for the enhancement of pragmatic cooperation with ASEAN in economy, trade, education, tourism, agriculture, forestry, etc.

Secretary-General Yang expressed her appreciation to the FAO of Yunnan Province for its consistent support to ACC. She stated that ACC would spare no efforts to implement the consensus reached by the leaders of ASEAN and China, and to support the joint construction of the “Belt and Road” and the implementation of the “2+7” Cooperation Framework. Since its foundation, ACC has implemented over 90 projects, hosted or attended more than 400 activities to boost functional cooperation between ASEAN and China. In 2016 ACC would be engaged in a series of activities in celebration of the 25th anniversary of ASEAN-China dialogue relations. She looked forward to taking this opportunity to strengthen communication and exchanges with Yunnan Province and join efforts with Yunnan to push forward ASEAN-China relations and functional cooperation to a new stage.