Events

Usher in Another “Golden Five Year” of Lancang-Mekong Cooperation

2021-6-24 11:26:38

The 6^th Lancang-Mekong Cooperation Foreign Ministers’Meeting was held in Chongqing on June 8. Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Myanmar’s Foreign Minister U Wunna Maung Lwin co-chaired the meeting attended by foreign ministers of Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam. The meeting passed the Joint Statement on Enhancing Sustainable Development Cooperation of the Lancang-Mekong Countries, the Initiative on Deepening Cooperation among Local Governments of Lancang-Mekong Countries and the Joint Statement on Deepening Cooperation on Traditional Medicine within the Framework of Lancang-Mekong Cooperation and other documents.

Wang Yi emphasized that, standing at the new historical point, China will firmly follow President Xi Jinping’s diplomatic concept of amity, sincerity, mutual benefit and inclusiveness for dealing with our neighbors, and join hands with Mekong countries to build a community with a shared future for Lancang-Mekong countries. For the next steps, he suggested to focus on deepening anti-pandemic cooperation, jointly seeking recovery after COVID-19, expanding water resources cooperation, promoting pragmatic cooperation at local levels, strengthening people-to-people ties and improving cooperation mechanisms, to usher in another “Golden Five Year” of Lancang-Mekong cooperation.

The Lancang-Mekong cooperation has developed rapidly since it was launched on March 23, 2016. Ge Hongliang, a senior researcher at the Charhar Institute and Deputy Dean with the College of ASEAN Studies at Guangxi University for Nationalities, said that the Lancang-Mekong cooperation over the past five years has not only injected fresh and sustainable vitality into the development of the Lancang-Mekong countries, but also provided the fundamental impetus for the quality improvement and upgrade of the friendly and cooperative relations between the countries in the region, as well as for building a community with a shared future for Lancang-Mekong countries oriented towards peace and prosperity.

The Chinese loan supports the Mekong countries to carry out more than 40 major infrastructure projects such as highways, airports, power stations and power grids, and industrial parks. In 2020, the trade volume between China and the five Mekong countries reached 322.1 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of 66.3% over 2015. China has become the largest trading partner of Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar and Thailand.

Pou Sothirak, Executive Director of the Cambodian Institute for Cooperation and Peace, spoke highly of the cooperation progress among Lancang-Mekong countries in interconnection, production capacity development, cross-border economy and trade, water resources, agricultural development and poverty reduction. He said that in the past five years, the projects under the Lancang-Mekong cooperation framework have been fully implemented, which will elevate the level of the cooperation among Lancang-Mekong countries and deliver more benefits to people in the Greater Mekong Sub-region.

Polon Sorie, in charge of the C7 power plant of the Electricité du Cambodge (EDC), went to China to participate in the energy interconnection training under the Lancang-Mekong cooperation mechanism, and witnessed the changes brought to Cambodia and the benefits delivered to the local people by this mechanism over the past five years. He said that “Lancang-Mekong cooperation is a model of regional multilateral cooperation that contributes to narrowing the development gap among ASEAN countries”.

Recently, the handover ceremony of the drinking water demonstration project under Lancang-Mekong cooperation was held in Hatkeep village, at the downstream of the Nam Ou River II Hydropower Station in Laos, marking the official handover of the project. The Nam Ou River cascade hydropower project is the first basin-wide development project carried out by Power Construction Corporation of China in Laos. The project has been highly recognized by the Lao government with its green development concept featuring in minimizing the ecological and environmental impact, the inundation area and the resettlement.

So Sophort, Secretary-General of Cambodia National Mekong Committee, suggested that in the future, the Lancang-Mekong cooperation mechanism should continue to increase investment in the sustainable development of the Lancang-Mekong basin, and further strengthen the political, economic, technological ties and regional interconnection among Lancang-Mekong countries for common prosperity and sustainable development within the region.

(Source: CCPIT/www.chinatradenews.com.cn)