Chinese Ambassador to Pakistan Jiang Zaidong has welcomed Pakistan hosting the 23rd SCO Council of Heads of Government meeting for the first time and assured full support of his country to Islamabad in materializing the meeting’s objectives to strengthen cooperation among the SCO member countries in politics, security and other spheres.
“We are pleased to see that Pakistan has not only officially joined the SCO, but also is about to host the Meeting of the Council of the Heads of Government of the SCO Member States for the first time,” he said while talking to Pakistan Observer on Sunday.
Jiang Zaidong said, “China is holding the rotating presidency of the SCO. We would like to have close cooperation with Pakistan, and implement the consensus of the SCO summit well, to strengthen cooperation in politics, security, economy, people-to-people exchanges and other fields, to advance the building of an even closer SCO community with a shared future, and to make new contributions to promoting the development and growth of the Global South and the common prosperity and development of regional countries.”
“China and Pakistan are both members of the SCO and the Global South. We stand ready to work with countries including Pakistan, to strengthen unity and expand cooperation, to join hands in creating a reliable strategic support for member states to achieve common prosperity and revitalization, and to advance the building of a common home of solidarity and mutual trust, peace and tranquility, prosperity and development, good-neighborliness and friendship, and fairness and justice.”
He said Pakistan is one of the first non-founding countries that joined the SCO, and its status and role in the SCO are becoming increasingly important. Early in 2015 when President Xi Jinping visited Pakistan, he made it clear that China welcomes Pakistan to become a full member of the SCO.
About the strong bond of friendship between Pakistan and China, the ambassador said, “China and Pakistan are all-weather strategic cooperative partners and ironclad friends. We have just celebrated the 73rd anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Pakistan, and have reviewed the glorious history of China and Pakistan together.”
He maintained, “What I want to emphasize is that, this visit is the exchange of visits between our two countries’ prime ministers within just four months after H.E. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif visited China. This in itself, has fully reflected the great importance China attaches to the development of China-Pakistan relations and its strong support for the new government of Pakistan.”
Emphasizing the need for improving the security situation to ensure completion of projects, like CPEC, the Chinese ambassador said, “A safe and stable environment is crucial and indispensable to China-Pakistan practical cooperation, including CPEC construction. In particular, CPEC cooperation has entered a new stage of forging an “upgraded version”, which puts higher demands on reliable security guarantees.”
He added that the ‘two sides must better coordinate security and development, and ensure the new development pattern with a new security pattern. We must not allow similar incidents to recur and delay the construction of CPEC and even the process of major China-Pakistan cooperation.’
“We appreciate the efforts and sacrifices made by the Pakistani government and military to combat terrorism. We hope that Pakistan will speed up the investigation of cases, severely punish criminals, and resolutely and effectively fight terrorism,” Jiang Zaidong expressed.
“We stand ready to further strengthen counter-terrorism and security cooperation with Pakistan, improve the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s mechanism to respond to security threats and challenges, strengthen close cooperation with all parties, work together to combat terrorism, and jointly safeguard regional peace and stability and international fairness and justice,” the ambassador emphasized.
To a question about bottlenecks in implementation of CPEC projects, the Chinese envoy said, “As for the temporary difficulties faced by CPEC construction and even the entire China-Pakistan practical cooperation mentioned above, there are both constraints from Pakistan’s security environment and the impact of the global economic downturn. I think the first thing to solve is not what to do, but how to look at it. The key is to hold confidence.”
Recounting the successes of the present government in Pakistan, Ambassador Jiang Zaidong said, “Pakistan’s new government has only assumed office for a few months, and Pakistan’s GDP has returned from negative growth and achieved a positive growth of 2.4%. Pakistan’s CPI has dropped from 28.7% at the beginning of this year to 6.9% last month, reaching a new low in 44 months. As for the long-standing foreign exchange reserve issue, Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves rose to nearly US$16 billion last month, reaching the highest over the past several years.”
He said when he visited Karachi and Lahore recently, he especially told Chinese and Pakistani entrepreneurs to thank the efforts made by Pakistani government under the leadership of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, and to have confidence in your country’s development prospects.
The ambassador said Pakistan is a major agricultural country, and its cotton, mango and wheat production respectively ranks fifth, sixth and seventh in the world. Pakistan is also the world’s fourth largest producer of dairy products, but its modernization level needs to be improved. For this, one of our Chinese companies are cooperating with Pakistani side to establish a modern high-efficiency water-saving agriculture demonstration base covering an area of 660 thousand square meters, and will train 1,000 technical and management personnel and talents for Pakistani agriculture sector.
“The better Pakistan develops, the more favorable conditions China and Pakistan have to promote cooperation,” Ambassador Jinag Zaidong concluded.
