On the morning of September 6, Du Jiahao, CPC Hunan Provincial Committee secretary and Hunan Provincial People's Congress Standing Committee director, and Xu Dazhe, CPC Hunan Provincial Committee deputy secretary and Hunan governor, met with Sierra Leone President Julius Maada Bio and his entourage in Changsha. He came here to attend the 4th Investing in Africa Forum.

 

Secretary Du, on behalf of the CPC Hunan Provincial Committee and the People’s Government of Hunan Province, welcomed the guests. He said, “Hunan is the hometown of Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi, and other older generations of the CPC and national leaders. It has always been attaching great importance to communication and cooperation with African countries. In the 1970s, the provincial government sent a medical team to aid Sierra Leone. Since then, the cooperation and friendship between the two sides have never been interrupted.” He continued, “Hunan will implement the important consensus reached by presidents at both sides and the results of the 2018 Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation; promote mutual collaboration in such fields as modern agriculture, mineral exploration, tourism and sightseeing, culture and education, health care, and infrastructure construction; and, encourage more advancing Hunan enterprises to inspect and invest in Sierra Leone.” “The 1st China-Africa Economic and Trade Conference will be opened in Hunan next year and it will be held permanently here. We sincerely welcome all relevant parties in Sierra Leone to join us and look forward to achieving fruitful win-win results,” he added.

 

President Bio believed that the visit to Hunan was an important part of the delegation's trip to China. He said, “Sierra Leone people are grateful to Hunan for its strong support and sincere help in the health care field over the past few decades. We firmly support multilateralism, economic globalization, and free trade. We look forward to further expanding and deepening cooperation with Hunan in such aspects as education, fishery, and tourism. We expect under the ‘Belt and Road’ initiative proposed by President Xi Jinping and the framework of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, both sides would achieve mutual benefits and common development.”

 

This article is from Hunan Provincial Government. www.enghunan.gov.cn.  

 

Translator: Yu Jiangjiang

 

Chinese source: hunan.gov.cn