State Councillor & China’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Two decades of shared journey toward new heights

THIS year marks the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC). On October 12, President Xi Jinping and President Macky Sall of Senegal, the current African co-chair of FOCAC, issued a joint congratulatory message to mark this important occasion.

Embracing the dawn of the new century and the trend of peace and development 20 years ago, China and our brothers in Africa decided to initiate FOCAC to promote winwin cooperation.

Since then, the family of China and African nations has had its own platform for collective dialogue and mechanism for practical cooperation, ushering in a brand new chapter in China-Africa relations.

The past twenty years have been a journey of productive cooperation.

FOCAC has bolstered high-level interactions and political trust between China and Africa, delivering a leap in China-Africa relations from “a new type of partnership” to “a new type of strategic partnership” and to “a comprehensive strategic and cooperative partnership”.

China-Africa cooperation has made impressive achievements. In 2019, direct Chinese investment stock in Africa topped US$49,1 billion, up by nearly 100 times from the year 2000; China-Africa trade reached US$208,7 billion, 20 times the size of 2000. China has been Africa’s largest trading partner for 11 years in a row, and has contributed more than 20 percent to Africa’s growth for a number of years.

Many flagship projects — the African

Union (AU) Conference Centre, the Addis Ababa-Djibouti Railway, and the Mombasa-Nairobi Railway, to name a few — have been completed and put into use.

Cooperation in other fields, from science, education, culture, health, to people-to-people exchange, peace and security, is also making significant headway.

Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), President Xi Jinping has set great store by China’s relations with Africa.

He personally laid down principles guiding China’s Africa policy, including sincerity, real results, amity and good faith, and pursuing the greater good and shared interests, and called for building a stronger China-Africa community with a shared future.

His devotion to leadership diplomacy with Africa has given a strong boost to the relations between the two sides.

The political foundation has been cemented.

In 2013, President Xi Jinping chose Africa as the destination of his first overseas visit as the Head of State of China. So far, he has visited Africa four times, covering all sub-regions of the continent. In 2015 and 2018, Chinese and African leaders convened two historic FOCAC summits: one in Johannesburg and one in Beijing.

In June this year, the Extraordinary China-Africa Summit on Solidarity Against Covid-19 was held at a critical moment in tackling the coronavirus. Political interactions between the two sides are more frequent, extensive and unprecedented in scale.

For example, on the sidelines of the FOCAC Beijing Summit, President Xi Jinping attended more than 70 bilateral and multilateral events in eight days.

With the re-establishment of diplomatic relations between China and The Gambia, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Burkina Faso, the China-Africa family has been further expanded.

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