By Kebba Jeffang
The Chinese Ambassador to The Gambia Zhang Jiming, said the relationship between The Gambia and the People’s Republic of China, is based on mutual fairness, justice and a win-win cooperation.
Jiming was speaking at the commemoration of the 69th anniversary since the founding of China, at their Embassy’s grounds in Bijilo, on Tuesday October 2nd. The event was attended by senior government officials including the Gambia’s Foreign Affairs Minister Mamadou Tangara, and the Speaker of the National Assembly, Mariam Jack Denton.
“The rich outcomes of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation’s (FOCAC) Beijing Summit, renders unprecedented opportunity for China-Gambia cooperation, at a new stage of sound and strong development. Standing at a new historical starting point based on the One China principle, China and the Gambia can and will develop an exemplary new state to state relationship, featuring mutual respect, fairness, justice and a win-win cooperation, and contribute to building an even stronger China-Africa community of a shared future,” he said.
Jiming said China supports the government in building a ‘new Gambia’ and assures that they are willing to enhance pragmatic cooperation and expand people-to-people exchanges, and support the Gambia’s efforts in enhancing peace and security, and capacity building.
“This year alone, around five hundred Gambians go to China for various short-term training or study programmes, on a variety of development related subjects. There are already hundreds of Gambian students studying at Chinese Universities among which, nearly one hundred Gambian students are on Chinese Government scholarships,” he said; that for the second year running, China is helping the Gambia in food shortage alleviation, through humanitarian assistance. According to him, the People’s Republic of China, will dispatch agricultural experts to Central River Region and provide labor saving agricultural machinery next year.
China and The Gambia have cemented their relationship since restoration of bilateral cooperation two years ago with the Asian country, and have already started a number of development projects for the West African state.
