China highly values its traditional friendship and relations of all-round cooperation with Vietnam, and is ready to work jointly with Vietnam to further promote Sino-Vietnamese friendly relations in the future, Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan said in Beijing January 21.

Tang made the remark at a reception this evening, marking the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between the two countries.

Tang said that China and Vietnam are neighbors linked by mountains and rivers, and the people of the two countries have a time-honored friendship. He added that bilateral relations have withstood the test of decades, and good-neighborliness has characterized their relationship.

He said that leaders of the two countries have kept up a tradition of exchanges since the normalization of bilateral relations in 1991, and that this has been invaluable in maintaining bilateral relations.

Tang referred to the Beijing summit between General Secretary Jiang Zemin of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and his Vietnamese counterpart Le Kha Phieu in February last year. He said that during the meeting, the two leaders set far-sighted guidelines for the two countries' future relationship, marked by stability, good-neighborliness and all-round cooperation, and signifying a new era of bilateral relations.

He said that Premier Zhu Rongji also paid a visit to Vietnam last month, and reached consensus on Sino-Vietnamese cooperation in the economic and other fields with the Vietnamese leadership. Aland border treaty signed at the end of last year contributed to the further development of bilateral ties, he added.

Vietnamese ambassador to China, Bui Hong Phuc, said that the new generation of leaders of the two countries has developed "comrade-like and brotherly" Sino-Vietnamese relations, which were initiated by the elder generation of the two countries' leaders.

A series of consensuses reached recently have provided new momentum for the friendly ties, he added.