ACCRA -- China and Ghana on Tuesday pledged to strengthen bilateral relations and take it to a new high in the years ahead.

This was disclosed when Chinese Ambassador to Ghana Gong Jianzhong visited Ghana's presidency in Accra to bid President John Dramani Mahama farewell after completing his three-and-half- year tenure in the West African country.

Gong said the two peoples and their governments had always supported, helped and learned from each other since diplomatic relations were established by leaders of the two countries over five decades ago.

He said China and Ghana were two important developing countries which had made tremendous contributions to advance the world, and fully believed that the two countries had a very bright future in their cooperation in the years to come.

"We are so happy to work together to develop our social economic developments," Gong said.

"As the Ambassador, during the last three-and-half years, I have tried my best to promote the bilateral relations between our two countries. And I am so happy to see that during the last few years our relationship has been enhanced and promoted," he said.

He thanked the Ghanaian president and his government for their strong support during his tenure, saying he was honored to retire from diplomatic service in Ghana, a great country which would always remain in his heart.

"As a retired diplomat, I will continue my effort to promote Ghana, its culture and people in China and I will continue to do my best to promote the bilateral relations between our two countries," said the Chinese envoy.

President Mahama thanked the ambassador for his work during his period in Ghana and added that Ghana would court Chinese assistance as it tried to turn events of small-scale illegal mining into a positive development between the two countries.

"We will express an interest to engage to see how we can reclaim some of the mined out lands and, using Chinese technologies, clean the poisoned waters and restore the lands that were destroyed to a good state so that we can continue to have a good environment," he said. "So it is my dream that working together on this will be a symbol to both our countries that we can work together to bring unfortunate events into events that will augur well for both of us, " said Mahama.

China and Ghana established diplomatic relations on July 5, 1960.

The founding fathers of the two new-born republics laid a solid cornerstone for the development of bilateral ties.

In recent years, fruitful achievements have been made in various fields of bilateral cooperation, especially under the framework of the China-Africa Cooperation Forum.

Trade between the countries has grown to about 5.4 billion U. S. dollars.