Visit highlights strong ties with Africa

Foreign Minister Wang Yi's upcoming New Year visit to four African countries marks a continuation of Beijing's 34-year-long fine tradition in its diplomacy, manifesting the nation's unswerving policy emphasis placed on the vast number of Global South countries on the African continent.

Wang will visit Namibia, the Republic of the Congo, Chad and Nigeria from Sunday to Jan 11 at the invitation of these countries, the Foreign Ministry announced on Friday.

Speaking at a regular news briefing in Beijing, ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said that this will be the 35th consecutive year that Africa has been the destination of the first overseas trip of the year by China's foreign minister.

The diplomatic tradition dates back to January 1991, when then-foreign minister Qian Qichen visited Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania.

Wang's upcoming trip is aimed at driving the implementation of the outcomes yielded at the Beijing summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation last year, Mao said.

Leaders of all the 53 African countries having diplomatic ties with China came to Beijing to attend the summit in September.

President Xi Jinping proposed at the summit that China and Africa should work together to promote six modernizations: fairness and rationality, openness and win-win, people first, diversity and inclusiveness, eco-friendliness, and peace and security.

Also, Xi proposed jointly implementing 10 partnership actions to be implemented in the following three years, covering areas such as trade, industrial chain cooperation, connectivity, agriculture and livelihoods.

"The African side has responded warmly," the ministry spokeswoman said.

She noted that Xi proposed to elevate China's bilateral relations with all African countries that have diplomatic relations with China to a strategic relationship level and elevate the overall positioning of China-Africa relations to an all-weather China-Africa community with a shared future in the new era.

"Namibia, the Republic of the Congo, Chad and Nigeria are all friendly partners of China," Mao said.

Wang's upcoming visit will "deepen practical cooperation in various fields and promote the sustained and in-depth development of China-Africa relations", she added.

Last month, China officially started to grant zero-tariff treatment for all tariff product categories to all least developed countries that have diplomatic relations with China, including 33 African countries, and this decision received an extensive welcome from Africa.

"There is always vast space for African brothers in China's endeavor to expand high-standard opening up; and China will never be absent from Africa's pursuit of development and revitalization," Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian told reporters last month.