File photo: Chinese Vice Premier Li Keqiang (R) meets with Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari, who is here to attend the first China-Eurasia Expo, in Urumqi, capital of Northwest China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Aug. 31, 2011. Photo: Xinhua

Leading a large business delegation to China, Speaker of the Sindh Assembly Nisar Khuhro said in Beijing Thursday that the huge areas of great potential for economic cooperation between the two neighbors are likely to drive their friendship to new heights in the coming years.

"The Sindh Provincial government has created an atmosphere conducive for investment, particularly for Chinese investors who should take advantage of this," Khuhro told the Global Times in an interview.

He supported the direction given by President Asif Ali Zardari and said the leadership of the Pakistan Peoples Party is fully committed to increasing cooperation with China in all fields.

Khuhro was in Beijing to attend the Sindh Trade and Investment Forum at the Pakistani embassy.

Muhammad Zubair Motiwala, advisor to the chief minister of Sindh and chairman of the Sindh Board of Investment, said that Sindh's competitive advantage lies in its long coastline and immense oil, gas and coal resources as well as its broad scope for renewable energy investment, including wind, solar and biogas.

The government of Sindh in September decided to introduce the Chinese language as a compulsory subject for secondary schools from 2013.

"Chinese is a language used by almost one-fifth of the world's population so there is no reason for us to isolate ourselves from this," Khuhro said.

The Pakistani government has already asked China to build two Confucius Institutes in Sindh, according to Pakistan's Ambassador to China Masood Khan, to accompany the existing one in Islamabad. "Hopefully, a new one will be established in Karachi," Khan said.

Khuhro played down any security concerns in Sindh, stressing that the "collective wisdom and leadership" of different political groups had managed to ease tensions in the region.

"It was the first time the nation decided together through the Parliament to counter the activities of terrorism in Pakistan," he said, stressing that they have already broken the necks of many terrorism elements.

However, he acknowledged that there are sectors that need improvement to defuse the situation altogether.

"Education promotion, health expansion and infrastructure building, all these things put together, will ease the tensions between the societies," Khuhro said.