Ambassador Cui Jianchun
China will be eagerly looking forward to welcome H.H the Prime Minister of Kuwait Sheikh Jaber Al Mubarak Al Sabah during his 5 day visit to the country. “During his visit to China from June 2, H.H the Kuwaiti Prime Minister will hold talks with his Chinese counterpart as well as the President and Speaker of the Parliament, disclosed His Excellency Cui Jianchun, Chinese ambassador to Kuwait.
Both sides expect the visit to open a new chapter in the already strong and friendly relations between the two countries, Ambassador Jianchun revealed. Elaborating ambassador Jianchun said the visit aims to enhance cooperation in several areas and cover important issues for both sides. Discussions will centre around security, military, banking and financial cooperation.
The ambassador said that H.H the Premier’s talks in China will tackle a wide array of key issues such as the building of an “economic belt” which will secure economic integration between the east and the west. “Security cooperation particularly internal security from terrorists, separatists and radicals will be another topic that will be discussed between the two sides,” ambassador Jianchun revealed, pointing out that China wishes to resolve all disputes with its neighbours peacefully.
Energy cooperation will be another area of discussion, pointing out since Kuwait is a resource rich country and China is looking for energy security the two countries will work together to leverage this advantage and map out a strategy for the coming years. These discussions will centre around export, import, joint ventures including technology and human resources.
On the banking sector China will welcome Kuwait’s participation as one of the founding members in the proposed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). The bank will play a very important role in the growth of the region as it will help finance projects in the proposed silk route and will have more than 22 countries on board. Kuwait was the first GCC country to establish diplomatic relations with China in 1971 and since then relations have flourished.
China supported Kuwait during the invasion and is now the fifth largest trading partner with Kuwait. Bilateral trade now stands at US $12.5 billion and Ambassador Jianchun expects trade to be doubled in the coming three years. Ambassador Jianchun disclosed that H.H the Premier will speak at the sixth China-Arab Cooperation Forum to be held in Beijing on June 5th. The forum will discuss cooperation between the 22 Arab states and China and also the main focus will be the discussion on the construction of the Silk Road economic belt.
Under the framework of “one belt and one road,” China hopes to deepen its cooperation in several areas including construction of infrastructure, business and trade and people-to-people exchanges. Elaborating on the Silk road project ambassador said the initiative will inject new energy to the existing bilateral and multilateral cooperation mechanisms among China and Arab countries.
This year marks the 10th year since the establishment of the China-Arab Cooperation Forum. During the forum, Chinese and Arab countries will review their achievements reached in the past 10 years and set the tune for the China-Arab ties in next decade. An action plan for 2014 to 2016 and a development outlook for next 10 years will be announced. China- Arab ties and cooperation have been significantly improved in the past decade. The trade volume between China and Arab countries rose from $25.5 billion to $238.9 billion, increasing 25 percent average each year, while the Chinese investment in Arab countries has grown 18 times, reaching $9.2 billion.
The Silk Road Economic Belt stretches from China to Europe through Middle East and the Silk Road on the Sea of the 21st century extends from China to the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Sea and the Gulf through Southeast Asia Ambassador Jianchun also pointed out that the talks will touch upon cultural cooperation, noting that a number of Chinese literary works will be translated into Arabic and a number of Kuwait and Arabic literary works will be translated into Chinese. Kuwait recently attended the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) in Shanghai. The two-day conference, was attended by several heads-of-state and organisation chiefs, to discuss the security situation in the continent.
Staff Report