BEIJING, July 11 (Xinhua) -- Wu Bangguo, China's top legislator, is currently on a high-profile, eight-day official goodwill visit to France, meeting extensively with French government officials and parliamentarians including President Nicolas Sarkozy, Prime Minister Francois Fillon, speaker of the French National Assembly Bernard Accoyer, Senate President Gerard Larcher and others.
During the meetings, both sides hailed the traditional friendship between the two countries as well as the smooth development of bilateral ties in recent years while pledging joint efforts to boost their comprehensive strategic partnership, which was launched in 2004.
France established diplomatic relations with China in 1964, becoming one of the first Western countries to set up official ties with China. Because of its pioneering nature and strategic significance, Sino-French relationship has played a leading role in relations between the Western countries and China, Wu, chairman of the Standing Committee of the Chinese National People's Congress (NPC), told President Sarkozy in their talks Saturday.
Wu stressed that China attached great importance to its relationship with France and said he hoped that the two sides would keep the pioneering nature and strategic significance of their relationship and maintain a constant drive to develop their comprehensive strategic partnership.
Sarkozy described China as a very important country in the world and an important strategic partner of France. He said France had always paid great attention to its relations with China.
Trade and economic cooperation serve a major topic of the visit as Wu called for a close, long-term and sustainable type of new economic and trade partnership and laid out a three-point proposal in this regard.
