Chinese premier's Eurasian tour achieves fruitful results

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang's just concluded three-nation tour in Asia and Europe achieved fruitful results in enhancing China's cooperation with foreign countries both nearby and faraway.[Special coverage]

During Li's visit to Kazakhstan, China and Kazakhstan agreed to deepen collaboration in the area of confidence-building measures, and to allow CICA, or the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia, to play a greater role in the future.

The two countries also agreed to jointly establish a technical cooperation center as both sides have huge cooperation potential in hi-tech fields, innovation and transformation of scientific achievements.

During the 13th Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) prime ministers' meeting, the member states -- China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan -- vowed to accomplish more in their common development with new consensuses on deepening win-win cooperation, in the economic area in particular.

The countries agreed to create convenient conditions for expanding cooperation in finance, banking, technology, innovation, energy, customs, agriculture, transport and telecommunications.

The leaders of the six countries pledged to bolster investment cooperation through projects in such areas as advanced technology, transport and logistics, as well as telecommunication.

Special attention, they said, should be paid to environment protection, so as to protect the potential of natural resources in SCO countries.

The six nations also expressed support for augmenting trade and investment cooperation with SCO observer states, dialogue partners as well as international and regional organizations.

During the third leaders' meeting of China and Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries in Belgrade, the participating countries agreed to enhance connectivity and pledged to continuously improve China-Europe international railway container transportation, encourage relevant parties to facilitate customs clearance, create new logistics routes and hubs, and strengthen cooperation in infrastructure development.

To boost trade and economic cooperation, Li proposed setting up a new framework for joint investment and financing between China and CEE countries as a way to serve the real economy.

China encourages CEE countries to continue using the 10-billion-U.S.-dollar special credit line, and another 3-billion-dollar investment fund will be established to encourage Chinese companies and financial institutions to participate in public-private cooperation and the privatization process in CEE countries.

After his meeting with Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, Li said the two governments have agreed to kick-start mutually beneficial cooperation on agro-product trade and railway.

Bilateral cooperation on railway and farm produce trade is of vital significance to Thailand, and is conducive to regional inter-connectivity and development, said Prayut, adding that Thailand will cooperate closely with the Chinese side to facilitate the implementation of relevant cooperation agreements.

Meanwhile, Li also attended in the Thai capital Bangkok the fifth summit of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) Economic Cooperation, which groups Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam.

China, he said, will offer the five neighboring countries opportunities to share the Mekong River funds and production capacity aid so as to help promote infrastructure connectivity, poverty reduction and production capacity.

The offer includes 1 billion U.S. dollars for infrastructure inter-connectivity, according to the Chinese premier.