ACC Secretary-General Met with Undersecretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs of the Philippines

On 7 December 2015, ASEAN-China Centre (ACC) Secretary-General H.E. Mme. Yang Xiuping met with H.E. Mme. Laura Q. Del Rosario, Under-Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs of the Philippines in Manila, the Philippines. Mme. Hellen Barber-de Vega, Assistant Secretary for ASEAN Affairs of the Department of Foreign Affairs of the Philippines, Mr. Ivan Frank M. Olea, Minister of the Embassy of the Philippines to China, Ms. He Xiangqi, Chargé d’Affaires of the Chinese Embassy to the Philippines, Mr. Tri Purnajaya, Director of Education, Culture and Tourism Division (ECTD) of ACC, also attended the meeting.

Secretary-General Yang introduced the mandates and major work of ACC, as well as the recently held 5th Meetings of the Joint Council (JC) and the Joint Executive Board(JEB) of ACC. She said that the year of 2015 was the 40th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the Philippines and the two countries had conducted a series of activities in the fields of trade, investment and tourism, etc. The year of 2016 would celebrate the 25th anniversary of the establishment of dialogue relations between ASEAN and China, and was designated as the Year of ASEAN-China Educational Exchange. ACC would actively implement the consensus reached by the leaders of ASEAN and China and make new contributions to deepen the practical cooperation in the fields of trade, investment and people-to-people exchanges between ASEAN and China.

Under-Secretary Del Rosario recognized the work of ACC since its establishment and welcomed ACC to jointly conduct capacity building programmes with the relevant agencies of the Philippines. She said that despite a huge potential for tourism in the Philippines, there was still a big gap in infrastructure construction such as ports, roads, resorts, etc. She hoped that ACC could encourage more enterprises to invest in the Philippines to help improve the tourism environment and infrastructure construction.

On the same day, Secretary-General Yang also met respectively with Ambassador Claro Suarez Cristobal, Director-General of the Foreign Service Institute of the Department of Foreign Affairs of the Philippines, and Ambassador Wilfrido V. Villacorta, Vice President of De La Salle University and former Permanent Representative of the Philippines to ASEAN, and exchanged views on exchanges and cooperation in the fields of education and culture.