PNG first to sign under belt, road plan: Wang

CHINA’S Foreign Minister Wang Yi describes Papua New Guinea as the first Pacific Island country to sign a memorandum of understanding and cooperation plan with China on belt and road projects.
He said China-aided projects such as roads, bridges, universities, hydropower stations and state grid in PNG and made important contributions to PNG’s economic development and improvement of people’s livelihood.
“China’s policy towards PNG is open to all the people in the country and is supported by all parties and factions in the country.
“China never interferes in other countries’ internal affairs and hopes that PNG will maintain good governance and social harmony and speed up development and revitalisation.”
During his brief visit to Port Moresby, Wang also spoke about the future prospects of China-Australia relations.
He noted that the crux of the difficulties in China-Australia relations in the past few years was that some political force in Australia insisted on viewing China as a rival rather than a partner and framing China’s development as a threat rather than an opportunity.
He said this had led to a significant retrogression of the many-year positive and pragmatic China policy by Australia.
Wang said that the solution was looking at China and China-Australia relations in a sensible and positive way, uphold mutual respect, seek common ground while shelving differences, and create the necessary conditions for bringing bilateral relations back on the normal track.
He also stressed that to improve China-Australia relations, there was no “auto-pilot” mode.
“A reset requires concrete actions.
“This meets the aspirations of people in both countries and the trend of our time,” he added.