ACC Secretary-General Met with Former High Officials of Malaysia Ministry of Foreign Affairs

On 9 December 2015, the Secretary-General of ASEAN-China Center (ACC) H.E. Mme. Yang Xiuping met with Mr. Tan Sri Ahmad Fuzi Abdul Razak, former Deputy Secretary-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Malaysia, and the President of Malaysia-China Friendship Association (MCFA) and former Ambassador of Malaysia to China, Ambassador Dato' Abdul Majid Khan. Mr. Tri Purnajaya, Director of Education, Culture and Tourism Division (ECTD) of ACC also attended the meeting.

Secretary-General Yang expressed her appreciation for their high attention to Malaysia-China relations and ASEAN-China relations for many years and in particular, their support and assistance to the “China Millennial Travelers & Outbound Tourism Seminar, co-hosted by ACC and Malaysia Tourism Promotion Board. She said that last year witnessed the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the diplomatic relations between China and Malaysia. Both sides held various activities to celebrate the event. Recently, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang paid a successful visit to Malaysia and both sides agreed to further improve the comprehensive strategic partnership between China and Malaysia. Both sides should take this opportunity to deepen practical cooperation in various fields so as to further promote a lasting development of bilateral relations to benefit the peoples of both sides.

Secretary-General Yang commended Malaysia for its contribution to ASEAN-China relations as the ASEAN Chair in 2015. She further added that the year of 2016 would celebrate the 25th anniversary of ASEAN-China dialogue relations and the Year of ASEAN-China Educational Exchange, thus both ASEAN and China should start early preparations and draft plans to celebrate the event.

Both Mr. Razak and Mr. Majid praised the joint efforts of ACC and Malaysia Tourism Promotion Board in organizing the Tourism Seminar. They said that the friendship between Malaysia and China had a long history and bilateral exchanges continuously deepened. Malaysia would like to strengthen exchanges with China, especially with the local governments and organizations, with a view to achieving new progress in promoting bilateral relations and ASEAN-China relations. Tourism, education, youth exchanges were essential parts of people-to-people exchanges, which had played important roles in boosting friendship and mutual understanding between the two countries. China has a huge tourism market and Malaysia had rich tourism resources. Respective counterparts of Malaysia and China should continue to improve tourism services, infrastructure and environment in order to attract even more two-way travel hence, contributing to the prosperity of the countries' economy and services industry.