Honorable Professor Peter Katjavivi, Speaker of the National Assembly,

Honorable Lukas Sinimbo Muha, Chairperson of the National Council,

Honorable Faustina Caley, Deputy Minister of Education, Arts and Culture and our guest of honor,

Honorable Laura Mcleod-Katjrua, Governor of Khomas Region,

Dr. George Simataa, Secretary to Cabinet,

Hon. Esther Utjiua Muinjangue, Deputy Minister of Health and Social Services,

Honorable Executive Directors, Deputy Executive Directors and all senior Namibian government officials,

Colleagues of the Diplomatic Corps,

My Fellow Chinese,

Friends from the media,

Distinguished guests, Ladies and Gentlemen,

    Good evening. 

Please allow me to start with extending my warmest welcome to all of you to the Chinese Embassy, joining us in celebrating the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China.

I am deeply honored with the kind attendance of all of you. In particular, I wish to thank Honorable Speaker Katjavivi, Honorable Chairperson Muha, all the Honorable Ministers, Honorable Governors and Honorable Deputy Minister Caley, our guest of honor for being with us tonight. I thank all of you for making yourselves available, and especially thank all our friends who have travelled a long way to attend this event.

    We are here not only to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, but also to applaud for the achievements of China-Namibia relations.

I also avail myself of this opportunity to express my deep appreciation to all our friends who have made contribution to the development of China-Namibia relations and provided help to the work of the Embassy.

As all our friends know, over the past 75 years, China has undertaken an extraordinary journey. Under the strong leadership of the Communist Party of China and with the concerted efforts of the Chinese people, we have turned China into the 2nd largest economy in the world and built a moderately prosperous society in all respects.  

Now, China has opened a new chapter in pursuing the Chinese path to modernization, as the Third Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee held in July this year has adopted the Resolution on further deepening reform comprehensively to advance Chinese modernization.

More than 300 major reform measures will be implemented in the next five years. These reform tasks are compulsory, which have to be accomplished by the 80th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 2029. Our goal is to basically realize socialist modernization by 2035.

    In spite of facing an uncertain, complex and severe external environment, as well as new challenges from deepening structural adjustment domestically, China's economy has managed to grow 5 percent in the first half of this year and China continues to serve as a key engine for global economic growth.

Just yesterday, the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee made a very important decision on promoting the development of the Chinese economy with a series of critical new measures being adopted. Given that the economic fundamentals which will sustain long-term growth remain unchanged, and the trend toward high-quality development continues to develop, we are confident to achieve the target goal for economic growth.

As a defining feature of Chinese modernization and a key driving force to China’s economy, opening up is one of the major fields for reform in the years ahead.

In promoting high-level opening up, China will steadily expand institutional opening up, deepen the foreign trade structural reform, further reform the management systems for inward and outward investment, improve planning for regional opening up, and refine the mechanisms for high-quality cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative.

As President Xi pointed out in his keynote speech at the 2024 Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, known as the FOCAC, “China and Africa account for one-third of the world population. Without our modernization, there will be no global modernization”. China wishes to join hands with Africa to advance modernization, and China will provide strong support to Africa in this regard.

At the summit, President Xi announced 10 partnership actions for modernization with Africa in the next three years, which cover a great range of areas. It’s indeed a comprehensive plan to boost the African countries’ overall capabilities. 

President Xi also announced that, to implement the 10 partnership actions, the Chinese government will provide 360 billion yuan of financial support through the next three years. We have the reason to believe that China-Africa cooperation will be elevated to a new level encouraged by the fruitful outcome of the summit.

Here, I wish to point out that, the 10 partnership actions announced by China are all relevant to Namibia. We welcome Namibia to participate in all these partnerships, and we will include Namibia in all the actions we will take so that Namibia will enjoy the benefits.

As another milestone in the development of China-Namibia relations, during the summit, President Xi and President Mbumba held a very successful bilateral meeting, having reached important consensus on further pushing forward China-Namibia Comprehensive Strategic Cooperative Partnership.   

I firmly believe in the enormous potential of Namibia’s economic growth and I am fully confident in the future of China-Namibia economic cooperation.  

Recently, we have seen some new investment in Namibia by Chinese companies such as the acquisition of Osino gold mine and the Tsumeb Smelter as well as the desalination plant to be jointly established by Swakop Uranium and the Namwater.

In the next 5 to 10 years, we may expect a big expansion of Chinese investment in Namibia. Chinese companies will invest in extensive areas such as the oil and gas, the green hydrogen, agriculture, education, infrastructure and information technology.

 We will also see an increase in our bilateral trade which reached 1.3 billion US dollars for the first time last year.  During the summit, our two governments have signed an agreement for China to import Namibia’s lamb, and China is positive in expanding market access for other agricultural products of Namibia.

China will continue to be a close development partner of Namibia. We will be keen to help our Namibian friends in their efforts of social and economic development, such as combating drought and enhancing infrastructure and people’s livelihood. We have pledged 75 million Namibian dollars of food assistance to Namibia and we will implement new assistance projects such as the police housing project.

In particular, we wish to strengthen talent training cooperation with Namibia. We are thinking of pairing up vocational education training institutions of our two countries. We have dispatched 8 agricultural experts to Namibia recently who will stay here for 2 years to provide training services to Namibian farmers through FAO program. As we have announced to provide 60,000 training opportunities to Africa in the next 3 years, I am certain there will be more Namibians going to China for training.

Distinguished guests, Ladies and Gentlemen,

China and Namibia not only share deep common interests, but more importantly, enjoy a profound traditional friendship. We have been friends for a very long time, and this is a point we will always keep in our mind when we forge ahead our bilateral relations. I believe China and Namibia will continue to support and help each other in all the areas, and there will be much more we can accomplish together.

In conclusion, I wish to propose a toast, to the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, to the everlasting China-Namibia friendship and even greater development of our bilateral relations, and to the good health of all our distinguished guests. Cheers!