Xi's visit to usher in new era in China-Poland partnership: ambassador

WARSAW - The upcoming visit to Poland by Chinese President Xi Jinping will bring historic opportunities to the two countries, said the Chinese ambassador to the Central European country.

Relations between China and Poland have embarked on a fast track of development since they forged strategic partnership in 2011, Xu Jian told Xinhua ahead of Xi's trip to Serbia, Poland and Uzbekistan.

Xi's visit is expected to usher in a new era in the partnership between China and Poland, said Xu.

Political mutual trust between China and Poland is ever deepening in recent years with increasingly mature dialogue mechanisms between the two countries, he said.

Apart from the vice-ministerial strategic dialogue mechanism and the intergovernmental cooperative committee, the China-Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) cooperative mechanism initiated by China and Poland has effectively promoted exchanges between China and countries in this region, he added.

Polish President Andrzej Duda visited China in November last year, when he and Xi reached wide consensus and agreed to boost the strategic partnership between the two countries.

One benefit of their sound relations is rapid surge of trade between the two sides, said Xu, adding that bilateral trade topped 17 billion U.S. dollars in 2015, a six-fold rise on that in 2004.

For many years, Poland has been China's biggest trading partner in the CEE region while China has been Poland's biggest trading partner in Asia. Moreover, Poland is the only CEE country among founding member of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, said Xu.

Meanwhile, people-to-people exchanges between China and Poland are flourishing. Recent years have seen fast rise in the numbers of Polish students in China and Chinese learning in Poland, and five Confucius Institutes have been set up in Poland, said the ambassador.

The annual inflow of Chinese tourists to Poland has increased to more than 60,000 from some 7,700 in 2004, while 70,000 Polish nationals going to China last year, he said.

Local-level exchanges mark another highlight of their ties. There are now more than 50 pairs of sister cities between China and Poland.

A direct railway connection between Lodz in Poland and Chengdu in China has helped forge a close link between the two countries, said Xu.

On the Belt and Road Initiative, Xu said Poland is the biggest CEE country in terms of territory, population and economic volume, adding that it's important both for the initiative and China-CEE cooperative mechanism.

During his trip to China last year, Duda expressed support and readiness to join the Belt and Road Initiative and the two countries signed agreements to work together for the initiative.

Xu said China and Poland have a lot to cooperate in areas including infrastructure, logistics, agriculture, clean energy and science and technology.

"I'm so much impressed by the ever growing China-Poland relations in recent years. Our ties are the best ever nowadays," said the Chinese ambassador.