With Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing in Africa on his first overseas trip of the year, our government yesterday published its first ever policy paper on Africa.

 

It is a great idea to share with the rest of the world our perspective on Africa, our policy goals there, and our approaches to achieving them.

 

The document places special weight on sincerity, equality and mutual benefit, solidarity and common development as the country's guiding principles in dealing with relations with Africa.

 

From the UN to summits of developed countries, Africa has commanded considerable attention in the world's recent discourse on development.

 

Despite all the sympathetic rhetoric and vows of assistance, the people of Africa have seen few benefits.

 

What distinguishes China's Africa policy from that of some other countries is its truthfulness and non-exploitive nature.

 

When the Chinese talk about friendship with Africa, they mean it.

 

The 1,860-kilometer Tanzania-Zambia Railway shows that.

 

The mammoth project was an astronomic burden on our young People's Republic, which itself was recovering from debilitating natural disasters and under tremendous pressure from Western sanctions in the mid-1960s.

 

Responding to then Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere's pledge to repay the expensive kindness, however, late Chairman Mao Zedong simply said a country winning independence earlier has a moral obligation to help newly independent ones.

 

To fulfil that obligation, a total of 50,000 Chinese workers were dispatched to Africa, 65 of whom died there.

 

Beyond that, numerous factories, farms, schools and hospitals in operation today on African soil are fruits of Chinese benevolence.

 

For decades, our provinces and major cities have sustained a tradition of sending volunteer medical service teams to Africa.

 

Mao declined the Tanzanian president's offer to repay our generosity. But our African brothers have never forgotten those altruist gestures of fraternal affection.

 

Upon the People's Republic of China's official assumption of membership of the UN, Mao said with gratitude that we were elevated to the world body by our African brothers.

 

Past exchanges of goodwill have laid solid groundwork for the two sides to bring their time-honored friendship into the present and future.

 

The Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, a Chinese initiative launched in 2000, stands as an ideal platform to inject new vitality into the historical partnership.

 

Respectively the world's biggest developing country and the continent featuring the highest concentration of developing countries, China and Africa face similar challenges in pursuing progress.

 

In addition to traditional forms of assistance, we can also deliver benefits to our African partners through trade and other cooperative projects. Our principle of mutual benefits weighs heavily at this point.

 

From their trade with us, African countries not only receive our capital and products, but also technologies, management know-how, and, most important of all, goodwill.

 

Our government has honored its promise of a huge debt exemption package for African countries with financial difficulties. It has also offered low or zero-tariff treatment to imports from the least-developed African countries.

 

Under the China-Africa Forum framework, our country has opened various training programs for talents from Africa. That will prove a substantial boost to Africa's self-reliance in human resources.

 

"In light of its own financial capacity and economic situation, China will do its best to provide and gradually increase assistance to African nations with no political strings attached," says the policy paper.

 

That is an essential statement to define the China-Africa relationship.

 

It was the freedom from political preconditions that cultivated the genuine trust in our ties.

 

With such a vital cornerstone, our friendship is guaranteed to sustain and thrive.

 

(China Daily January 13, 2006)