China.org.cn, June 22, 2016
On President Xi Jinping's current tour
of the western-central sector of the proposed New Silk Road, he has
decided not only to make bilateral visits to Serbia and Poland, but also
to the Central Asian state of Uzbekistan. President Xi will, of course,
be attending the annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization
(SCO) in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent; but his decision to precede the
summit with a full-dress bilateral visit sends a signal that China
attaches particular importance to relations with Uzbekistan, a staunchly
supportive partner of China throughout the quarter-century of the
country's existence. Since Uzbekistan's independence,
relations with China have steadily grown. In order to prevent the
emergence of a dangerous vacuum in the Central Asian region following
the break-up of the Soviet Union, China has made every effort to engage
the new countries to her immediate west. Since then, both countries have
assumed a rising significance in each other's regional and
international objectives. A Declaration of Strategic Partnership was
signed in June 2012, and a permanent intergovernmental commission has
been put in place to discuss the practical details of the cooperation
program.
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