Chinese President Hu Jintao paid a state visit to Saudi Arabia on April 22-24 at the invitation of Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz.

King Abdullah chose China as his first stop of his first foreign tour after ascending the throne in last January, during which President Hu and the King reached important consensus on building Sino-Saudi Arabian strategic friendly cooperation relationships. Three months later, the two leaders met again in Riyadh to discuss continuous development of the relationships. It is the first time in the history of China-Arab relations that two top leaders exchange visits in such a short period of time. The successful visit to Saudi Arabia by President Hu injected strong vitality to the friendly cooperation between the two countries and marked an overall boost of the bilateral ties.

China and Saudi Arabia cherish a long tradition of friendship, and the two peoples started contacts quite early. At the beginning of the 7th century, founder of Islam Mohammed once said: learning, though as far as in China, should be pursued. This famous remark of his both affirmed the value of Chinese culture and ties between the two countries and encouraged later generations to continue and strengthen contacts. The ties progressed rapidly after diplomatic relations were officially established in 1990, represented by close contacts at all levels, increasingly strengthened mutual understanding and trust, and rich cooperation fruits in political, economic, trade, cultural and other fields. Trade volume between the two nations topped $16 billion last year, with Saudi Arabia having become China's largest trading partner in West Asia and North Africa.

Looking into the future, there are solid foundation and broad prospects for developing Sino-Saudi friendly relationships featuring mutual benefit and pragmatic cooperation. This is chiefly because of the following three facts:

First, politically, China and Saudi Arabia are important countries in eastern and western Asia respectively. China is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, and enjoys ever enhancing international status and influence, while Saudi Arabia, as a big Arabian and Islamic country, serves a heavyweight in the Gulf region and the Muslim world. Both pursue an independent foreign policy of peace, hold the same or similar opinions on many major international and regional issues and coordinate with each other in international affairs. Although of different social systems, China and Saudi Arabia have neither questions left over by history nor fundamental conflicts of interest.

Second, economically, China is an important polar of the world economy, while Saudi Arabia is among the world top 20 economies. Both are developing countries and the two economies are highly complementary. Along with continuous economic growth China will accordingly need more energy. In meeting its energy needs, China exercises a policy of mainly depending on domestic supply, paying equal attention to extraction and conservation, and at the same time using foreign energy moderately as a necessary supplement. Saudi Arabia, with world top petroleum reserve and production, is worthy of the name "Kingdom of oil". Last year China imported 22 million tons of crude oil from Saudi Arabia, or 17.5 percent of its total import. Saudi Arabia has become China's largest energy supplier. On the other hand, some Chinese products and technologies are also needed by Saudi Arabia. Besides, China has seen annual increase in its foreign exchange reserve, while Saudi Arabia has enjoyed soared oil income brought by price hikes. There are, therefore, broad prospects in building a mutual-beneficial cooperation mode focusing on energy and covering trade, investment, mining, petrochemistry, engineering and telecommunication, and it's no hard job to realize $40 billion trade within five years.

Third, culturally, both countries have brilliant civilizations. China is an oriental ancient civilization while Saudi Arabia is the originating place of Islam. Both the Islamic culture and traditional Chinese culture belong to oriental civilization and consequently bear many similarities in social values and morals. Both China and Saudi Arabia stress the respect for cultural diversity, equal-footed dialogue and exchanges between different civilizations, and oppose cultural conflict and confrontation. This serves a common language between the two countries for further strengthening humanity exchanges and expanding cultural cooperation.

China and Saudi Arabia have become good partners enjoying mutual trust and sincere cooperation, and will continue to bring tangible benefits for the two peoples.

The author Liu Shuiming is senior editor of People's Daily Overseas Edition.