General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and President Hu Jintao started his visit to Vietnam on invitation Oct. 31, to promote with Vietnamese leaders the "four good" relations, namely, "good neighbors, good friends, good comrades and good partners".

The visit is a major step of China's good-neighborly diplomacy.

Since the end of the Cold War, China's good-neighborly diplomacy has been active and fruitful, which is particularly true in the Southeast Asia region.

In 2003, China and ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) signed a declaration on strategic partnership oriented toward prosperity and peace. ASEAN became the first regional organization to establish strategic partnership with China while China became the first big country to have strategic partnership with ASEAN.

From this year, Hu Jitao visited Indonesia, the Philippines and Brunei. The visit to Vietnam this time is focused on consolidating and boosting the good-neighborly cooperation between China and Vietnam.

Since 1991 when diplomatic relations between the two countries were normalized, a landmark achievement of the Sino-Vietnamese relations has been the successful solution of the demarcation of the land borders and Beibu Gulf, which indicates the political mutual trust between China and Vietnam has made considerable progress.

On March 14 this year, China, Vietnam and the Philippines signed Tripartite Agreement for Joint Marine Seismic Undertaking in the Agreement Area in the South China Sea, which was an important step in building the South China Sea into a "region of peace, stability, cooperation and development". Economically, China becomes Vietnam's largest trade partner this year.

This is a significant meeting for exchanging experience in reform and opening up.

Vietnam and China share striking similarities in reform and both have achieved great successes.

From 1990 to 2004, Vietnam's GDP grew at 7.3 percent annually, a speed second only to China, ranking the second in Asia. Following China's 11th Five-Year Plan, Vietnam is to hold the tenth congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam to draft medium and long-term plan for the country's development next year. Therefore, the exchange of party building, and reform and opening up experience is of great help to both countries.

This is a visit that will determine the direction of the development of the bilateral ties.

In 1999, China and Vietnam settled on the principles guiding the bilateral relations, that is, long-term stability, orientation toward the future, good neighborliness and all-round cooperation. During his visit, Hu Jintao will, together with General Secretary Nong Duc Manh and President Tran Duc Luong, identify the direction of the development of China-Vietnam relations.

In the future, China and Vietnam will launch all-round and mutually beneficial cooperation at various levels, global, regional and bilateral, seeking joint development.

At the global level, as developing countries in transformation, both countries need to maintain and advance common development. As new players blending into the world economy, both of them need to respond to the challenge of globalization together. As developing countries, both should adopt positions to jointly safeguard the interests of developing countries on the reform of the United Nations.

Regionally, as participants in and promoters of regional cooperation, both China and Vietnam should gradually dissolve conflicts of interest through prioritizing the interest of the region, promote the exploitation of the Greater Mekong River subregion and cooperation through 10+1 (ASEAN + China), 10+3 (ASEAN + China, Japan and the Republic of Korea), East Asia Summit (EAS), Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), ASEAN Regional Forum and Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM).

At the bilateral level, while the political foundation for inter-party cooperation is to be consolidated, the economic, social and people-to-people foundations of the bilateral relations will be strengthened. In particular, both sides should, on the principle of setting aside disputes and joint exploitation, jointly seek solutions on South China Sea acceptable to both sides, and make efforts to solve the disputes over the sovereignty of the Sea.

The article is carried on the front page of People's Daily Overseas Edition, Nov. 1, and translated by People's Daily Online