Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Deng Li speaks at a press briefing about the upcoming 10th ministerial conference of the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum in Beijing, China, May 27, 2024. /CFP
The 10th ministerial conference of the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum will be held in Beijing on Thursday.
It not only coincides with the 20th anniversary of the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum, established in 2004, but also marks the first ministerial conference of the forum held after the first China-Arab States Summit, which was held in 2022.
"The 10th ministerial conference is a link between the past and the future, and will improve the quality of the conference," Dong Manyuan, a researcher on Middle East issues at the China Institute of International Studies, told CGTN.
"Specifically speaking, the conference, inheriting the forum's fruitful results in the past 20 years, will open a sprint period during which the relations between China and Arab states will witness quantitative to qualitative changes," Dong said, adding that the sprint period will overlap or intersect with the period during which China will realize its Chinese modernization.
Similar to Dong, Vice Foreign Minister Deng Li said on Monday during a press briefing about the upcoming conference that the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum has achieved important achievements in the past twenty years and relations between China and many Arab countries have developed by leaps and bounds.
Deng said that through joint efforts, China and Arab states have continuously deepened their strategic mutual trust and that pragmatic cooperation has benefited the people of both sides.
So far, China has established comprehensive strategic partnerships or strategic partnerships with 14 Arab states. Besides, China has been the largest trading partner of Arab states in recent years, and the bilateral trade between the two sides has increased from $36.7 billion in 2004 to $398 billion in 2023, said Ambassador for China-Arab States Cooperation Forum Affairs of the Foreign Ministry, Li Chen.
Noting China has signed Belt and Road cooperation documents with 22 Arab states and the Arab League, Li said the two sides have implemented more than 200 large-scale projects, benefiting nearly 2 billion people on both sides.
As well as booming trade, China and Arab states have enhanced cooperation in fields ranging from infrastructure and technology to cultural exchanges.
For example, the China-Arab States BDS/GNSS Center, the first overseas center for China's indigenous BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS), was inaugurated in Tunisia in 2018, according to a report on China-Arab Cooperation in the new era, which was issued by the Chinese Foreign Ministry in 2022.
Lusail Stadium, the first World Cup stadium built by a Chinese company, in Doha, Qatar, November 7, 2022./CFP
The report also said China and Arab states have expanded people-to-people exchanges to enhance mutual understanding. Since 2013, China has trained 25,000 professionals in various fields for Arab states and provided about 11,000 government scholarships to Arab states.
In addition, both China and Arab states have strengthened dialogues and negotiations to maintain regional stability as can be seen from the historic Saudi-Iranian reconciliation in 2023 as well as the recent talks between Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas in Beijing.
The widely concerned Palestinian issue will be one of the must-discussed topics at the upcoming ministerial conference. Deng said that Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Arab foreign ministers will continue to conduct in-depth discussions on the Palestinian issue, forming a common voice between China and the Arab countries at the conference.
Dong, the researcher said the discussion on the Palestinian issue at the conference shows both China and Arab states have taken an initial step toward "common security," and this is of practical significance in the upgrading of China-Arab states relations.
Moreover, this conference will focus on in-depth discussions and will study specific measures for implementing the consensus reached by the heads of state, expanding China-Arab cooperation in various fields, and accelerating the building of a China-Arab community with a shared future, according to Deng.
Echoing Deng, Dong said that compared with regions such as Eurasia, Latin America and the South Pacific, China and Arab states are expected to take the lead in establishing a community of shared future.