President of Equatorial Guinea Teodoro Obiang kicked off his visit to China, aimed to consolidate cooperation in traditional fields and also expand bilateral collaboration to new fields so as to diversify the African country’s economy and enhance its industrial capacity.
“China has supported Equatorial Guinea in many fields, both economic and technical. Equatorial Guinea is satisfied with the support we receive from the People’s Republic of China. You could even say that part of the transformation of Equatorial Guinea is precisely due to the economic support from the Chinese government,” Obiang told Xinhua in an interview published on Wednesday.
Equatorial Guinea hopes that China will assist in its economic diversification, continue technology transfers and increase support for talent training to help the country lay a solid foundation for independent development, he said.
During the visit, President Xi will hold a welcome ceremony and a welcome banquet for him. They will then hold talks and attend the signing ceremony of cooperation documents together. Premier Li Qiang and Zhao Leji, chairman of National People’s Congress Standing Committee, will meet with him respectively. President Obiang will also visit East China’s Shandong Province, Wang Wenbin, spokesperson of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said on Thursday.
Since taking office as president of Equatorial Guinea in 1982, Obiang has visited China 10 times, the most recent visit being in 2018 to attend the Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, Xinhua reported.
China’s current cooperation with Equatorial Guinea mainly focuses on infrastructure, technological cooperation, and other related areas, Song Wei, a professor from the School of International Relations at Beijing Foreign Studies University, told the Global Times. He noted that China has supported Equatorial Guinea in constructing various infrastructure projects and providing technological cooperation to enhance their independent development capabilities.
In the future, China will work toward promoting industrialization in Equatorial Guinea, as the resource-rich country is in urgent need of diversifying its economic development and industrialization. Therefore, China will continue to encourage more Chinese companies to invest in Equatorial Guinea and set up factories to support its industrial development capabilities, said Song.
When he met with Obiang in 2018 in Beijing, Xi said the China-Equatorial Guinea friendship had become increasingly solid with the passage of time, calling it “a fine example of South-South cooperation” and describing the two countries as reliable partners and brothers who had jointly injected new vitality into their comprehensive cooperative partnership.
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