Visiting Chinese President Jiang Zemin and Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Abdul-Aziz held talks in Riyadh November 2 afternoon local time at the Prince's residence.

Visiting Chinese President Jiang Zemin and Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Abdul-Aziz held talks in Riyadh November 2 afternoon local time at the Prince's residence.

The Crown Prince said that China is the best friend of Saudi Arabia, which is also the common feeling of all Arabians.

Jiang made a high comment on the remarkable achievements of the Saudi Arabian people under the leadership of King Fahd in defending the independent national sovereignty and territorial integrity, developing national economy and improving the living standard of its people.

Jiang said that Saudi Arabia is an important country in the Middle East and Gulf regions and exerts key influence in safeguarding regional peace and stability.

The Chinese President praised the independent and peaceful foreign policy and the positive role Saudi Arabia has played in maintaining peace and stability of the Gulf region, restoring the solidarity between Arab countries and pushing forward the Middle East peace process.

Over the past decade since China and Saudi Arabia have established diplomatic ties, drastic progress has been achieved through joint efforts of both sides in all fields of politics, economy, culture, news media and sports. China is satisfied with the development, Jiang said.

Last year when the Crown Prince visited China, the two countries have decided to enhance the bilateral relationship in political and economic fields to the height of strategic cooperation, which well demonstrated the political willness of the two countries to further develop relationship, Jiang said.

"We are happy to see that China and Saudi Arabia relationship has enjoyed a good momentum of development, with frequent visits of high ranking officials and field of cooperation expanded," he added.

China and Saudi Arabia are important countries in East and West Asia respectively, both of which adopt independent and peaceful foreign policy and have identical or similar views on many international affairs with mutual support and cooperation, Jiang said.

Although social systems of the two countries are different, he added, they don't have problems left over from history and have no conflicts of fundamental interests.

Both China and Saudi Arabia have advocated to develop bilateral relationship on the basis of the principle of mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit, non-interference in other's internal affairs, according to Jiang.

At present, Jiang said, international situation is undergoing a profound change, economic globalization is developing rapidly, which has provided us with opportunities and challenges as well.

Both China and Saudi Arabia are developing countries, which face the common task of developing national economy and improving the living standard of the peoples, Jiang said.

Thus, learning from each other is not only beneficial to the development of bilateral relationship but also the construction of respective country, Jiang added.

The Chinese President reaffirmed that China valued its relations with Saudi Arabia and is willing to join hands with it to devote to the establishment of strategic relationship and cooperation in political and economic field.

On economic cooperation and trade, Jiang said that economic and trade relationship between the two countries has developed rapidly over the past decade, with the volume of trade rising from 290 million US dollars to 1.699 billion U.S. dollars last year. Saudi Arabia has become the biggest trade partner of China.

Both China and Saudi Arabia have the strong willingness of boosting relationship. At the same time, economies of the two countries are highly complementary, Jiang said.

He elaborated that China has rich human resources, adequate commodities for consumption and advanced technologies in some fields, while Saudi Arabia has rich energy and fund and remarkable capability of consumption.

Jiang said that the Crown Prince and Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji agreed to establish strategic relationship of cooperation in Chinese-Saudi oil industry during his visit to China last year, which has fixed the orient for the two countries to develop economic relationship and trade.

Abdul-Aziz said that Saudi Arabian people have taken economy as their life. Saudi Arabia hopes to enhance the bilateral economic cooperation and trade up to a new height so that Chinese products could occupy a larger share of Saudi Arabia's market as well as in other fields.

The Crown Prince said that some ministers in charge of economic and trade affairs and enterpreneurs of Saudi Arabia hope to visit China to search for new ways and projects of cooperation.

He also hoped that more Chinese corporations will invest in Saudi Arabia.

Jiang expressed agreement with the Crown Prince.