On 12 February 2017, H.E.Mme.Yang Xiuping, Secretary-General of ASEAN-China Centre(ACC) met with Mr. Chen Fei, Mayor of Dezhou Municipal Government. Ms.Yang Jiuqing, Deputy Mayor of Dezhou, Ms.Xia Lianhong, DeputySecretary-General of Dezhou, Ms. Song Xiaomei, Mr. Zhang Aijun, Director and Deputy Director of Foreign and Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of Dezhou, and Mr. Ma Jun, Division Director of Shandong Foreign Affairs Office attended the meeting.

Mr.Chen Fei extended his warm welcome to Secretary-General Yang Xiuping for her visit to Dezhou. He said that under the “ One Belt, One Road” Initiative, Dezhou has been actively expanding its cooperation with ASEAN countries in recent years, which received strong support from Shandong Province, and has achieved fruitful results. Dezhou, with its advantages in transportation, resources, industries and well-developed middle and small-sized enterprises, has great potential in cooperation with ASEAN countries in the areas of trade, investment, culture, education and tourism. Dezhou hopes to seize the opportunity to comprehensively deepen practical cooperation in all areas with ASEAN and broaden space for it’s development. He highly appreciated ACC’s role in promoting the cooperation between China and ASEAN as an inter-governmental organization, and hopes to further expand the cooperation with ASEAN by making good use of the platform of ACC.

Secretary-General Yang spoke highly of the achievements of the cooperation between Dezhou and ASEAN.She made a brief introduction of the development of ASEAN-China relations,the mandate of ACC and the achievements ACC has made in the areas of trade, investment, education, culture, tourism and information and public relations since its establishment five years ago. She said that ACC attaches great importance to ASEAN-China cooperation at the level of local provinces and cities, and has made all efforts in this regard. ACC will continue to strengthen the communication and coordination with Dezhou so as to explore effective ways to assist Dezhou expedite its pace in"going out" , and realize a mutual beneficial result.

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