The China-Africa Think Tank Forum held its first meeting in east China on Thursday to discuss ways to promote political trust, economic cooperation and cultural exchanges between China and Africa.

The three-day meeting, held in Zhejiang province's capital of Hangzhou, was attended by nearly 300 officials and scholars from China and 27 African countries, representatives from the African Union Commission and other regional organizations, as well as African diplomatic envoys to China, according to Zhejiang Normal University, the event's organizer.

The meeting was held in the wake of the 8th senior officials meeting of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), a cooperative platform that advances Sino-African cooperation in the fields of peace and security, finance, investment and people-to-people exchanges.

The FOCAC was jointly proposed and established by China and more than 40 African countries in 2000. Since then, China and Africa have cemented solid political and diplomatic ties and significantly boosted economic cooperation, said Liu Hongwu, general director of the Institute of African Studies at Zhejiang Normal University.

China is now Africa's largest trading partner, while Africa is China's fourth-largest destination for outbound investment. By the end of 2010, China had invested around 40 billion U.S. dollars in more than 2,000 enterprises from 50 African countries and regions. These companies cover a variety of sectors, including agriculture, mining, manufacturing and finance.

Direct investment by Chinese enterprises in Africa amounted to 2.1 billion U.S. dollars in 2010, an increase of 46.8 percent over the previous year, according to statistics from the Ministry of Commerce.