Sri Lankan PM applauds China's achievements in striving for modernization

Sri Lankan Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena complimented China on its achievements in striving for modernization as he has seen its progress throughout his visits to the country and vowed to learn from its experience.

Gunawardena paid an official visit to China from March 25 to 30 at the invitation of the Chinese Premier Li Qiang.

Before and during this visit, Gunawardena traveled to China's northern and southern regions, such as southwest China's Yunnan Province, south China's Hainan Province, Beijing, and Shanghai. He was deeply impressed by China's rapid development in past decades.

"Managing a great nation and having growth, and innovations and research is what China has achieved in the last few years, a tremendous forward step that runs across China. I mean today in Shanghai, yesterday I was at the Boao conference, moved up, moved down from Beijing. Two months ago, I was in Yunnan with my delegation, our members of parliament, our public officials. We have seen the great achievements and development in all fields. So we can see the growth at every level, rural level, how the farmers have achieved better income levels, living standards, how their educational institutions have progressed, sharing the seats with the rest of the world, allowing other countries' children to come know their higher education, get back, implement the research they have done. So, I would say it's a great achievement which has to be studied because studies will never end," Gunawardena said in an interview with China Media Group (CMG) during his recent visit to the country.

In terms of developing Sri Lanka, Gunawardena said they have a lot to learn from China, especially high-speed railway technology.

"Sri Lanka, of course, is a small island. Our land area is small. Overall, if you take the fastest train China has produced, it's something for the whole world to think. Public transport, less costly, move faster. These are achievements China has made by a lot of changes that have taken place within China, not only new investment in new areas, cooperation with other entrepreneurs from a road technology being brought, jointly being put into practice, also is another aspect China has shown great understanding in working towards higher objectives," he said.

Sri Lankan PM applauds China's achievements in striving for modernization

Serbia's cooperation with China has been the best as the two countries enjoy rock solid friendship and trust, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping's upcoming state visit to the European country.

The Serbia president made the remarks in an exclusive interview with the China Central Television (CCTV) in Belgrade on Wednesday.

Vucic hailed the real friendship between Serbia and China.

"That time we were discovering each other. Now we know that there is a real friendship that's been established. Since then, we developed substantive trust between the top leadership of both countries. But I believe that there is a big change. We have never had anything against Chinese, never, ever. But now we like and we love Chinese people here, and we have nothing bad to say about our cooperation with China and Chinese state and Chinese people," he said.

"There were thousands of attempts from outside of the country in order to persuade us, to convince us that taking loans from China will create a dubious situation for fiscal systems of Serbia. But as you can see, an average public debt to GDP ratio in Europe now is 89.5 percent. And in Serbia it's 47 percent. We have no problems. We have always been cooperating in a very best manner with China," said the president.

The Serbian president hopes that more Chinese people will come to visit the country to better understand it.

"Apart from creating this trust and confidence in each other's decisions, in each other behavior within international public political arena. We developed our economic ties, trade ties and now it's time to go to another stage, a strategic partnership or how do we see a common future together. And at the same time, it's a also about people connecting to each other. That is, I believe, our task. And we expect more Chinese people to come to Serbia. I believe they feel at home here, and we like them and hope that this will bring more initiatives, different kind of initiatives, more businesses, more tourists, more people that would get to know many things about Serbia, Belgrade's history," said Vucic.

Xi will pay state visits to France, Serbia and Hungary from May 5 to 10.

Serbian president sees cooperation with China as best amid rock solid friendship, trust