China, Uzbekistan reach consensuses on strengthening ties

TASHKENT, July 28 (Xinhua) -- China and Uzbekistan reached a series of consensuses on raising bilateral relations to a higher level during Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi's visit to Tashkent on Thursday.

The two sides will take the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties as a new starting point to make joint efforts toward the vision and goal of building a China-Uzbekistan community with a shared future and inject new strong impetus into their comprehensive strategic partnership, Wang told reporters.

The two sides discussed the promotion of the Global Development Initiative and the Global Security Initiative, and Uzbekistan expressed readiness to support and participate in the two important initiatives, he said.

Both parties spoke highly of the growth of bilateral trade despite an unfavorable environment and voiced confidence in the prospects of further cooperation, Wang noted.

China and Uzbekistan pledged to achieve an annual trade turnover of 10 billion U.S. dollars as soon as possible and set new targets, and decided to jointly implement the five-year plan for economic, trade and investment cooperation, and draw up a list of priority cooperation projects for the future.

Both sides believe that the time is becoming ripe to push forward the construction of the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway and are willing to speed up the feasibility study for the project, he told reporters.

The two countries will deepen cooperation in poverty alleviation and set up a sub-committee on poverty reduction under the inter-governmental cooperation committee to advance the work.

They will also strengthen medical and health cooperation, expand joint production of vaccines, while China will assist Uzbekistan in building a regional center of vaccine production and research and development.

In addition, China will provide free cataract surgeries for another 500 Uzbek patients and set up a cooperation center for blindness prevention in the Central Asian country, Wang concluded.