Peace, friendship and cooperation with other countries are to China's fundamental interest and will remain the country's fundamental foreign policy in the future, visiting senior Chinese leader Li Ruihuan told Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov Friday in Sofia.
Li, chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, reiterated that Bulgaria is one of the first countries that established diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China when it was founded in 1949, and the Chinese people will never forget the valuable support of Bulgarian people then.
Despite volatile international situations over the past five decades and landmark changes to domestic political and economic landscape of both countries, bilateral relations have maintained steady development, Li said, noting that China is willing to further develop exchanges and cooperation with Bulgaria, especially in the economic field in the new century.
Li said that China is in need of a peaceful and friendly international environment for its economic development and improvement of its people's lives.
"China still has a long way to go in catching up with mid-level developed countries although great improvements have been made because of the two-decade old drive of reform and opening up to the outside world," Li said.
The world is faced with the accelerated pace of economic globalization, thus each country is more and more dependent on others and any attempt to rev up economic development behind closed doors without interactions with others will not succeed, Li noted.
Friendly cooperation with other countries will enable Chinese businesses to exploit both domestic and foreign resources and the same is true of businesses of all other countries, he said. Both China and Bulgaria are developing countries, and developing friendly relations of cooperation are to the interests of both peoples, he said.
President Parvanov said that bilateral relations with China are rather smooth. He spoke highly of China's economic achievements and said he expects economic relations between the two countries will further improve.
Parvanov reiterated Bulgaria's stance of persistently adhering to the one China policy, to which Li said China highly appreciates.
Li also met with Ognyan Gerdjikov, chairman of National Assembly of Bulgaria and Prime Minister Simeon Borissov Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in Sofia Friday.
Li extended invitation to Gerdjikov to visit China, and the Bulgarian lawmaker accepted it. Li and Simeon discussed the prospect of trade and economic cooperation between the two countries and they agreed that there are great potentials to tap in this field.
( May 17, 2002)
