Pragmatism sees vision turning to reality

A defining trait of Sino-African cooperation is it is result-oriented with the aim of improving African people's well-being and enhancing African countries' endogenous development capabilities.

That is clearly manifested in the convening of the Ministerial Meeting of Coordinators on the Implementation of the Follow-up Actions of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in Changsha, Hunan province, from Tuesday to Thursday — attended by representatives of the 54 African members of the FOCAC — as well as the Fourth China-Africa Economic and Trade Expo from Thursday to Sunday in the same city.

At the FOCAC summit held in Beijing in September, President Xi Jinping delivered a keynote speech in which he put forward six proposals and 10 partnership initiatives for jointly advancing modernization and building an all-weather China-Africa community with a shared future for the new era.

Following the summit, the two sides have been working closely together to actively implement these proposals and initiatives and they have made important progress and achieved many early harvests.

The ongoing Changsha meeting is conducive to enhancing the coordination between China and African countries with a focus on further implementing the six proposals and 10 partnership initiatives put forward by President Xi, so that people in China and Africa will benefit more from the outcomes of the 2024 FOCAC summit.

Implementing the proposals and initiatives, which cover a wide range of fields from trade, health and agriculture to industry chains, connectivity, green development and common security, entails timely communication, efficient coordination and close cooperation of government departments at different levels, enterprises, social organizations, institutions and media organizations. The Changsha meeting serves to provide such a platform for these stakeholders from both sides to energize their endeavors in different fields to transform the proposals and initiatives into blueprints, projects, actions and tangible benefits.

As the world has entered a new period of turbulence and change in recent years, relevant parties should strengthen their efforts to appropriately manage all types of risks and challenges and effectively address the impact of geopolitical conflicts while advancing high-quality Sino-African cooperation.

It is therefore necessary for the two sides to properly handle the relationship between strengthening participating countries' sense of fulfillment and also ensuring the benefits for China by taking concrete measures to safeguard China's overseas interests, as President Xi urged at a symposium on the development of the Belt and Road Initiative in Beijing in December.

China-Africa cooperation, which should be open, green and clean, needs to direct more attention from quantity, scale and investment to quality, innovation and sustainability under the principle of "planning together, building together, and benefiting together" and with the goal of pursuing high-standard, people-centered sustainable collaboration.

Focusing on enhancing connectivity, relevant efforts should be made to continuously create new space for win-win development at a higher level and with greater resilience and sustainability, by means of improved planning, coordination and management mechanisms.

Under these principles, as Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in his separate meetings with some African counterparts attending the Changsha meeting, China is willing to continue to share new development opportunities with African countries, and help African countries achieve modernization.

The two sides should further strengthen the alignment of their development strategies, and upgrade mutually beneficial cooperation, so that the African countries can expedite their industrialization process and deliver more benefits to their peoples.

Thanks to nearly 70 years of tireless efforts from both sides, the China-Africa relationship is now at its best in history. Unlike some major countries that treat their aid to Africa as a condescending gift stringed to certain demands in other fields, Sino-African cooperation is not only based on equality, mutual respect and win-win results but also unconditional.

China is committed to working with African countries to uphold multilateralism and the basic norms governing international relations, as well as the legitimate rights and interests of developing countries.

As the meeting in Changsha shows, China and Africa are working together to inject more dynamism into their bilateral cooperation and in doing so they are sending a strong message of solidarity and collaboration among members of the Global South.