China's top legislator meets French president

Zhao Leji, chairman of China's National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, met with French President Emmanuel Macron in Beijing on Thursday afternoon.

During their meeting, Zhao highlighted the talks held the same day between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Macron, noting that the two leaders have charted the course for the development of China-France relations in the next stage.

China would like to work with France to fully implement the key consensus reached by the two heads of state, uphold the spirit of the establishment of diplomatic ties, maintain close friendly exchanges, deepen mutually beneficial cooperation, expand people-to-people exchanges, while strengthening dialogue and coordination in multilateral fields to promote the sound and positive development of bilateral ties, said Zhao.

He said the NPC is ready to maintain close exchanges at all levels with the two houses of the French Parliament to share experiences regarding legislation and supervision to provide legal guarantees for practical cooperation between the two countries.

Macron said France and China have maintained candid, direct and substantive dialogue and reached many consensuses.

He expressed admiration for China's achievements in such fields as economy, science and technology, saying that France is willing to deepen practical cooperation with China, strengthen exchanges between legislatures, jointly address global challenges, and continuously advance a balanced development of France-China relations.

China's top legislator meets French president

China's top legislator meets French president

The U.S. dollar strengthened in late trading on Thursday.

The dollar index, which measures the greenback against six major peers, gained 0.14 percent to 98.990 at 3 p.m. (2000 GMT).

In late New York trading, the euro fell to 1.1652 dollars from 1.1672 dollars in the previous session, and the British pound decreased to 1.3339 dollars from 1.3350 dollars in the previous session.

The U.S. dollar bought 155.03 Japanese yen, lower than 155.15 Japanese yen in the previous session. The U.S. dollar increased to 0.8032 Swiss francs from 0.7994 Swiss francs, and it rose to 1.3953 Canadian dollars from 1.3948 Canadian dollars. The U.S. dollar was up to 9.4173 Swedish kronor from 9.3744 Swedish kronor.

U.S. dollar ticks up