This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Sino-African diplomatic relations. No matter how the international situation has changed, Sino-African friendly relations have stood the test of time and seen steady development in political, economic, cultural and many other fields. As Ethiopian Ambassador to China, Hailekiros Gessese says, "Sino-African relations have become the good model of relations between developing countries".

The ambassador says in his article published in People's Daily that China provided great support to African people's national independence from the colonial rules. African countries also gave China support in resumption of China's status in the United Nations. Over the past decade, China and African countries have supported each other and maintained the common interest of the developing countries in the UN and other international forums. In recent years, China has also begun to encourage enterprises to invest in Africa and speed up the educational, medical and cultural exchanges between the two sides. The mutual visits of Chinese and African leaders also help improve bilateral cooperation. China has provided assistance to African countries without any preconditions.

The Ethiopian Ambassador says in the 21st century, the two sides should make new policies to improve mutual cooperation and unity in order to upgrade bilateral friendly relations to a new level. It's well-known that in October 2000, China-African Forum was held in Beijing which marked an important turning point in bilateral relations.

The Beijing Declaration and the Sino-African Economic and Social Development and Cooperation Program became a guideline for Sino-African cooperation.

And the second ministerial meeting of Sino-African Forum was fortunately held in Addis Ababa in Ethiopian in December 2003. Since that meeting, great progress has been made in Sino-African cooperation. For example, China has exempted tariffs for 190 products from 29 least developed African countries. Sino-African trade volume reached 40 billion US dollars in 2005. About 800 Chinese enterprises are investing in the 49 countries in Africa with a total investment of 1.2 billion US dollars.

The Addis Ababa Action Program has effectively implemented the Beijing Declaration in 2000 and Sino-African Cooperation Program.

The ambassador believes that the forthcoming third ministerial meeting of The Sino-African Forum to be held in Beijing will be another grand meeting in the history of the Sino-African relations.

The ambassador says he hopes that the Beijing meeting will make more strategic documents to further promote Sino-African relations.

"I like to stress that China has forever been Ethiopia's good friend. The friendly bilateral relations have proved this. For African people, China symbolizes the beacon of hope. African people will learn from China's successful experience according to their own reality. African countries need to establish equal, mutually beneficial, sincerely cooperative and all dimensional friendly relations with China in order to promote sustainable development in African economy, " says the ambassador.

By People's Daily Online