Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) meets with Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta in Johannesburg, South Africa, Dec. 3, 2015. (Photo; Xinhua/Xie Huanchi)
China and Kenya vowed here on Thursday to deepen mutually beneficial cooperation and push their ties to a higher level.[Special coverage]
The two countries reached the consensus as Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Kenyan counterpart, Uhuru Kenyatta, held talks ahead of the Johannesburg Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) scheduled for Dec. 4-5.
China stands ready to work with Kenya to comprehensively deepen their cooperation in various areas and push bilateral relations to a higher level, Xi told Kenyatta.
The Chinese president is in the South African economic hub to co-chair the two-day FOCAC summit, which is to be attended by leaders and senior officials from China and African countries.
Xi underlined the China-Kenya comprehensive cooperative partnership of equality, mutual trust, mutual benefit and win-win outcome is brimming with robust vitality.
To further lift the bilateral relations, Xi urged the two countries to consolidate political mutual trust and maintain high-level exchanges, expand mutually beneficial cooperation and well implement major cooperation projects including railways and special economic zones.
Meanwhile, Xi suggested the two sides boost people-to-people exchanges, push forward programs such as the Sino-Africa joint research center and the Chinese culture center, and work together to protect ecological environment and wildlife.
While calling for enhanced exchanges and coordination in major international and regional issues including climate change, Xi expressed China's support to Kenya for a bigger role in safeguarding regional peace and stability.
For his part, Kenyatta spoke highly of the Kenya-China relations that have reached a new level, adding the pragmatic cooperation between the two countries have produced tangible results.
He also expressed Kenya's willingness to dovetail its development strategy with that of China and carry forward cooperation projects in fields such as railway infrastructure.
Those measures aim at promoting economic and trade links as well as personnel exchanges among African countries and realizing the mutually-beneficial and win-win outcome in the continent's cooperation with China, he added.
