China, Solomon Islands vow to advance comprehensive strategic partnership

BEIJING: China and the Solomon Islands on Thursday agreed to advance their comprehensive strategic partnership as Chinese Premier Li Qiang held talks with the Solomon Islands’ Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele in Beijing.

China will promote the sustainable development of the comprehensive strategic partnership with Pacific island countries, including the Solomon Islands, and work together with them to build a closer China-Pacific island countries community with a shared future, Li said.

He noted that over the past five years since the establishment of diplomatic ties, the China-Solomon Islands relationship has maintained strong development, with deepening political mutual trust and fruitful exchanges and cooperation in various fields, making it a model of South-South cooperation.

China supports the people of the Solomon Islands in independently choosing a path of development in line with their own national conditions and is willing to continue to firmly support each other’s core interests with the Solomon Islands, Li said.

China stands ready to share more development experience with the Solomon Islands, strengthen cooperation in areas such as infrastructure, rural development, information and communications, and low-carbon transformation, and help the Solomon Islands enhance its internal drivers of development, Li said.

He expressed the willingness to import more high-quality agricultural and food products from the Solomon Islands, encouraged competent Chinese enterprises to invest there and urged both sides to strengthen exchanges and cooperation in the fields of education, health, culture, sports, youth, and local communities and further facilitate people-to-people exchanges.

Manele said the Solomon Islands is ready to work with China to deepen exchanges and cooperation in economy and trade, infrastructure development, medical and health care, and poverty alleviation to address global challenges such as climate change and promote the continued development of their comprehensive strategic partnership in the new era.

After the talks, the two sides witnessed the signing of a number of cooperative documents, including on Belt and Road cooperation.