Chinese, Peruvian presidents exchange congratulations on 50th anniversary of diplomatic ties

Workers transfer the Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccines at the Jorge Chavez International Airport in Lima, Peru, Feb. 7, 2021. (Peruvian Presidential Press/Handout via Xinhua)

BEIJING, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping and Peruvian President Pedro Castillo on Tuesday exchanged congratulatory messages on the 50th anniversary of bilateral diplomatic relations.

Xi pointed out that China and Peru, though geographically apart, enjoy long-standing friendly exchanges and a solid foundation for bilateral relations.

Since the establishment of diplomatic ties 50 years ago, the two sides have deepened political mutual trust, and expanded practical cooperation as well as people-to-people exchanges, setting a good example of solidarity, cooperation and common development between China and Latin American countries, Xi said.

Since the onset of the COVID-19 epidemic, China and Peru have stood in solidarity and helped each other, actively carried out epidemic fight and vaccine cooperation, and demonstrated the vision of a community with a shared future for mankind with concrete actions, he added.

Xi said he attaches great importance to the development of China-Peru relations and stands ready to work with Castillo to take the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties as an opportunity to enhance the alignment of the two sides' development strategies, upgrade their cooperation in various fields, lead people across sectors in the two countries to carry forward the traditional friendship and push the China-Peru comprehensive strategic partnership to a new level.

For his part, Castillo pointed out that Peru and China are both ancient civilizations with several thousand years of history. On the basis of traditional friendship, bilateral relations have been upgraded to comprehensive strategic partnership in recent years, he added.

Castillo said that Peru attaches great importance to developing relations with China and thanked China for providing a large number of supplies and vaccines to support Peru's fight against COVID-19.

He said Peru is ready to maintain close high-level exchanges with China, promote cooperation in such fields as trade, investment, tourism and digitalization, jointly uphold multilateralism, fight against COVID-19 and realize post-pandemic economic recovery.