SPEAKING FOR DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
Though growing in strength, China is still in essence a developing country, and will, as always, stand up for the interests of developing nations.
China's support is not just empty talk.
In September 2015, Xi launched a fund, with an initial contribution of 2 billion U.S. dollars, to support South-South cooperation, and promised that China would do its best to raise its investment in the least developed countries to 12 billion U.S. dollars by 2030.
The same month, China announced the establishment of a 20-billion-yuan (about 3 billion U.S. dollars) China South-South Climate Cooperation Fund to help other developing countries combat climate change.
"As a responsible country, China has taken a lot of concrete actions to put its proposals into practice. Such actions are conducive to world peace and development, and especially enable other developing countries to share the benefits of China's reform and opening up," said Professor Yang Baoyun.
Africa, in particular, enjoys China's unswerving support for its peace and development.
To ensure the smooth implementation of 10 major plans, which China announced last December, to boost cooperation with Africa over the next three years, China has pledged to offer 60 billion U.S. dollars of funding support.
Under the Belt and Road Initiative, China is committed to working with relevant African countries in developing key regional infrastructure.
Citing China's support for constructing modern ports in Djibouti, a modern Mombasa-Nairobi railway and an expressway in Addis Ababa, Tanzanian diplomat Aziz Mlima said such infrastructure would not only connect the concerned countries with Chinese markets and production chains, but also ensure deeper connectivity between African countries.
China also announced in September last year that in the next five years, it will provide a total of 100 million U.S. dollars in military aid to the African Union to support the establishment of the African Standby Force and the African Capacity for Immediate Response to Crisis.
China has always been Africa's dependable friend in the international arena, Mlima said, adding wider Africa-China cooperation "will definitely contribute sustainably to bilateral, regional, multilateral and world wellbeing."
