President of the Republic of Uzbekistan Islam Karimov met with Wu Bango, Chairman of the Standing Committee of People’s Congress of China, at the Oqsaroy on September 22.

Greeting the guest, the head of our state noted that People’s Republic of China is regarded in Uzbekistan as a major and reliable partner, a country with ancient history and a unique culture, by right one of the leading nations in the world currently in terms of economic power owing to the implementation of long-term development strategy.

The sides value the established ties of mutual openness and confidence, consistently and dynamically advancing in the spirit of principles of Interstate Agreement on Partnership Relations of Friendship and Cooperation signed in 2005. Considerable significance in this context has been attached to intensification of dialogue between supreme representative bodies of the two nations.

The peoples of both countries expressed appreciation of fruitful outcomes of the April 2011 state visit by the Uzbek President to the PRC, during which in excess of twenty important documents were inked and deals were reached to materialize projects worth more than 3.5 billion US dollars. It was stated then that the relations between
Uzbekistan and China were entering a qualitatively new stage to be characterized by the commencement of wide-scale cooperation in non-raw-materials and high-tech sectors.

The matching and proximity of approaches to pressing issues of regional and global nature have allowed the two parties to interact constructively within the United Nations, Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and other influential international political and financial institutions.

Priority dimension in the Uzbek-Chinese interaction is assigned to cooperation in economic sphere. In particular, thanks to the mutual interest of the two sides, consistently expanding has been the bilateral trade whose volumes has grown more than fourfold in the last five years and exceeded two billion US dollars in 2010.

More than 350 enterprises with the participation of Chinese capital have currently been successfully operating in Uzbekistan’s diverse sectors.

Wu Bango has sincerely congratulated President Islam Karimov on the widely celebrated jubilee date – the 20th anniversary of Uzbekistan’s independence and the impressive strides in socio-economic development achieved by the Uzbek people for a relatively short period of time owing to the well thought-out and effective reforms. The Chinese official said that Uzbekistan is the PRC’s closest partner and that his country is interested in further building up the relations with our nation in longer-term prospects.

A candid exchange of views on wider range of issues directed at further advancement of Uzbek-Chinese friendly bonds, including inter-parliamentary ties, along with other topics of shared interest took place during the meeting at the Oqsaroy.