Xi pledges duty free, training opportunities
China is signaling that the world's second-largest economy is ready to shoulder more international responsibility to support developing countries, analysts said Wednesday in the wake of President Xi Jinping's speech at the Asian-African Summit in Indonesia.[Special coverage]
Speaking at the summit, Xi pledged that China would boost cooperation with Asian and African nations while carrying forward the Bandung Spirit.
Xi raised a three-point proposal on building a community of common destiny for all mankind: to boost Asian-African cooperation, to expand South-South cooperation in order to speed up development among developing economies, and to promote South-North cooperation between developing and developed nations.
He said China will unswervingly promote Asian-African cooperation under the new circumstances, and plans to set up a series of concrete programs covering fields from economy to culture.
"Under the new circumstances, China is bringing new content to the Bandung Spirit and will upgrade its support to its friends in Asia and Africa," Liu Hongwu, director of the Institute of African Studies at Zhejiang Normal University, told the Global Times.
During the summit, Xi promoted a new type of international relations featuring win-win cooperation, which Liu believes will inject new vigor into the Bandung Spirit.
China brought with it the sincerity to seek friends at the original Bandung Conference 60 years ago when it was a poor and weak country. This year, it offered opportunities of mutual benefit as a leader of developing nations, he noted.
The 1955 Asian-African Conference gave birth to the Bandung Spirit, which called for solidarity, friendship and cooperation, seeking common ground while shelving differences, and pursuing common development. It has become an international norm to govern international relations.
During his speech, Xi announced that China will grant the least developed countries with which it has diplomatic ties the privilege of free duty on 97 percent of imported products within the year, and will continue to offer assistance to developing countries with no political strings attached.
He also urged developed countries to fulfill their aid pledges without a political agenda.
"China is stressing that it will not interfere those countries' internal affairs by not attaching any political conditions, which is also part of the Bandung Spirit," Li Zhibiao, a research fellow with the Institute of West Asian and African Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times.
China's support for developing countries was restricted to infrastructure in the 1960s due to its limited capabilities, and it has broadened to include culture, aviation and technology, said Wang Dehua, a professor at the Shanghai Municipal Center for International Studies.
China will provide 100,000 training opportunities for developing nations in Asia and Africa within five years. Meanwhile, 2,000 young Asians and Africans will be invited to visit China and attend a series of youth get-togethers, Xi said in his speech.
China is willing to join hands with all parties concerned to implement the "One Belt, One Road" initiative and set up the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), he added.
Chinese initiatives would inject new impetus into cooperation between the two continents, Wang said.
In the current world where injustice and inequalities among regions continue to occur, all developing countries must further strengthen cooperation to fight for a more equal international environment, especially to counter the injustice of economic development created by the West, Wang said.
Xinhua contributed to this story
