Improve Institutional Mechanism to Promote the Forum

It’s a great honor for me to be here. China South Asia Cooperation Forum has indeed been a remarkable success. It is playing an important role in bringing South Asian countries and China closer in addressing common challenges and exploring limitless opportunities to transform the destiny of our region.

China and South Asia are blessed with huge land mass, demography, natural and human resource. With progressive, pragmatic?judicious, and mutually beneficial policies the region can exploit its resources and potentials in an incredible manner and marching on to the path of massive economic development.

Today you can see that many people from Pakistan are attending 2nd China South Asia Co-operation Forum. They represent industry, commerce, media, government officials as well as elected leaders. The mere participation of such a diverse collage of people demonstrates how much depth the China South Asia Cooperation Forum has to grow and expand.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is important to recollect Forum’s evolution for its better understanding. Chinese President His Excellency Mr. Xi Jinping highlighted in a keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the Conference on Dialogue of Asian Civilizations that people in Asia needed to pursue a peaceful, open and integrated path for development for shared prosperity. They needed to develop a relationship based on equality and mutual respect. This inspiring speech by President Xi became a precursor to the establishment of CSACF.

In order to deepen cooperation between China and South Asian countries, the first CSACF was launched in last June in Kunming. The forum aspires to deepen understanding, trust, and development between China and South Asia to create favorable conditions for mutual benefits.

The 2nd CSACF, under the theme of “Stronger Sub-national Partnership for Win-Win Opportunities”, is aimed to promote policy dialogues and deepen cooperation between Yunnan and other South Asian countries.

The forum is into its second year and will have a promising future. We need to make concerted efforts to ensure that purposes and principles of the Forum are translated into reality and billions of people living in our region derive concrete and demonstrable benefits from the Forum’s deliberations and recommendations.

Pakistan will continue to support the Forum and its objectives and will its play its role in promoting shared principles of peace, development, and prosperity. Pakistan believes that regional development is only possible by supporting peace and eschewing conflict. We believe that in a globalized world, interdependence and co-operation at wider level remain key to have successful outcomes. Two greatest examples of such an in incredible example of cooperation are BRI and CPEC. China Pakistan Economic Corridor is a pilot project for the BRI. China has invested nearly 62 billion dollars in the project and many a projects have been completed and others are being vigorously pursued.

We all need to strengthen the institutional mechanism of the CSACF and help make it a great success. I thank you all for your time.