ACC Hosted Welcoming Ceremony for the Delegation of Officials from Mekong Countries

On 20 June 2016, ASEAN-China Centre (ACC) hosted the Welcoming Ceremony for the visit of the delegation of officials from Mekong countries. 28 officials from Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand and Viet Nam participated in the visit at the invitation of ACC.

H.E. Mme. Yang Xiuping, Secretary-General of ACC, welcomed the visit of the delegation and expressed her appreciation for the support from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China and relevant government agencies of Mekong countries. She introduced that 2016 marked the 25th anniversary of ASEAN-China dialogue relations. Over the past 25 years, ASEAN-China political mutual trust had been deepened, economic cooperation had seen remarkable achievements and the functional cooperation had been promoted in an all-round manner. This year, ACC had been implementing its flagship projects and had successfully organized a series of activities to celebrate the 25th anniversary of ASEAN-China dialogue relations, including the ASEAN-China Week held last month. She highlighted that the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation was an important part and a new highlight of ASEAN-China cooperation. Mekong countries and China were good neighbors and partners linked by rivers and lands. Both sides were close in geography and intimate in culture. The two sides enjoyed unique advantages and huge potential in connectivity building and people-to-people exchange. Strengthening the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation is not only conducive to boosting regional economic development and enhancing mutual friendship, but also contributed to narrowing development gap among regional countries and supporting ASEAN Community building. In March 2016, the first Lancang-Mekong Cooperation Leaders’ Meeting was successfully held in Sanya, Hainan Province, and adopted the joint declaration. The future cooperation faced bright prospects. The aim of this visit was to implement the important consensus reached by the leaders, and to further boost the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation and ASEAN-China relations.

Representatives of the countries expressed their gratitude for the warm invitation and thoughtful arrangement of ACC. They said that Mekong countries and China were facing the common task of development. Strengthening the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation was of great significance to the development of ASEAN-China relations. The leaders of both sides had drafted the blueprint for future cooperation. They expected to have deeper knowledge on the achievements and experience of China’s social-economic development, and to play a positive role in enhancing functional cooperation between the two sides in the areas of connectivity, production capacity cooperation, cross-border trade, poverty reduction, culture and education, etc.  

ACC successfully organized the first visit of the delegation of officials from Mekong countries in 2015. This visit of this year would last one week. Besides Beijing, the delegation would visit Nanjing of Jiangsu Province and Kunming of Yunnan Province.