South African President Jacob Zuma (L) shakes hands with visiting Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi in Johannesburg, South Africa, on October 10, 2015. Photo: Xinhua

 
Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi said China and Africa are joining hands for a bright future in an interview with local media Independent News and Media South Africa on Friday in Johannesburg.

He said, since the inception of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) 15 years ago, China and Africa have had fruitful cooperation across the board. Political mutual trust has grown significantly.

The two sides understand and support each other on matters involving each other's core interests and major concerns, thus upholding the common interests of China, Africa and the developing world, Yang said.

According to the statistics in 2014, trade between China and Africa exceeded 220 billion US dollars and China's investment stock in Africa surpassed 30 billion dollars, an increase of 22 and 60 times respectively over the figures in 2000 when FOCAC was just established. Moreover, the share of China-Africa trade in Africa's total foreign trade has increased from 3.82 percent to 20.5 percent.

Yang Jiechi said FOCAC has proven to be an important platform for collective dialogue between China and African countries and an effective mechanism for enhanced practical cooperation.

He said African countries have the common desire to accelerate industrialization and agricultural modernization in a bid to realize economic independence and self-reliant, sustainable development.

Meanwhile China has developed a large number of competitive industries and accumulated strong production capacities. This puts the two sides in a better position to work together to achieve win-win development based on complementarity of strengths, he said.

Yang said China and Africa will seize this rare historical opportunity of the summit, fully leverage their advantages of political mutual trust and economic complementarity and step up mutually beneficial cooperation in the five priority areas of industrialization, agricultural modernization, health, people-to-people exchanges and peace and security.

China, in the spirit of equal-footed consultation and joint preparation for the coming FOCAC summit, stands ready to work with South Africa and the other 50 FOCAC members on the African side to make the summit in Johannesburg a historic gathering that will strengthen China-Africa unity and lead China-Africa cooperation to the future, thus writing a new chapter for China-Africa relations, Yang added.