China, Cambodia pledge stronger ties, closer cooperation

Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi meets with Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister Hor Nam Hong in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Sept. 13, 2021. (Xinhua)

PHNOM PENH, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister Hor Nam Hong vowed to strengthen joint efforts towards stronger bilateral relations and closer cooperation in regional affairs.

They made the remarks during their meeting on Monday as part of Wang's visit to Cambodia.

During the meeting, Wang said China and Cambodia enjoy relations featuring an ironclad friendship and a community with a shared future, citing their strong and firm mutual support in jointly combating COVID-19, which he said has elevated the two countries' traditional friendship.

China is willing to work with Cambodia to implement the important consensus reached between the leaders of the two countries, constantly advancing the building of the China-Cambodia community with a shared future in the new era, Wang said.

Wang said that China is also willing to work with Cambodia to keep their communication in a flexible manner, strengthen mechanism construction for the China-Cambodia intergovernmental coordinating committee, boost coordinated exchanges and cooperation in various fields, and comprehensively implement the action plan for building a community with a shared future for both countries.

He also called on the two countries to strengthen coordination and cooperation in international and regional affairs, jointly advocate the ASEAN centrality in regional cooperation, guard against interference by any forces outside the region in the regional countries' efforts for common development and prosperity.

During their meeting, Hor expressed gratitude to China for its strong support for his country's efforts to overcome the pandemic and recover the economy, stressing that just as Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen has said, China has provided irreplaceable support for Cambodia and that the ironclad Cambodia-China friendship has taken root deep in the heart of the Cambodian people.

He said Cambodia is willing to work with China to give full play to the intergovernmental coordinating committee and advance practical cooperation between the two sides to achieve more fruitful results.

Cambodia supports accelerating talks on the Code of Conduct in the South China Sea between China and members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), reinforcing and boosting ASEAN-China relations to a high level and jointly safeguarding regional peace and stability, Hor said.

The two sides also made in-depth exchanges on international and regional issues of common concern during their meeting.

After Vietnam, Cambodia is the second leg of Wang's four-nation Asian tour which also takes him to Singapore and South Korea.