Arab League celebrates 80th anniversary in Beijing to highlight stronger ties: chief

League of Arab States (LAS) Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul-Gheit said the organization chose Beijing, the Chinese capital, to celebrate its 80th anniversary in recognition of the deepening ties between the Arab world and China.

In an interview with China Media Group (CMG) that aired on Friday, Aboul-Gheit, who has visited China six times, said the League had already marked the milestone in Cairo, Egypt, but chose to also hold a symbolic celebration in Beijing to reflect the growing partnership.

"We made the choice of China, for the cooperation that we have had with the Chinese over the last 20 years. The Arab League and China established a kind of a forum of cooperation in 2004. So it is already 21 years. A ministerial meeting between the foreign minister of China and all the Arab foreign ministers once every two years. We have had also in 2022 in December in Saudi Arabia, the first China-Arab summit. We will be having the second China-Arab summit in Beijing in 2026. So we find easiness in the cooperation with China. And the Chinese are reciprocating to our friendship. So we are working together," said the secretary-general.

Looking ahead to the upcoming summit, Aboul-Gheit noted that the Arab League and China share a common optimism regarding the future of Arab-China relations.

"I hope it takes place in 2026. I hope that the greatest number of Arab leaders would attend and that the economic and political cooperation between the two sides, China and Arab countries, would last as long as we desire," he said.

Chinese stocks closed higher on Wednesday, with the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index up 2.70 percent to 3,995.00 points.

The Shenzhen Component Index closed 4.79 percent higher at 14,042.50 points.

The combined turnover of the two indices totaled 2.43 trillion yuan (about 353.8 billion U.S. dollars), expanding from 1.61 trillion yuan on the previous trading day.

Precious metals, AI applications, computing hardware and semiconductor chips led the gains, while oil, gas, coal and pharmaceutical retail bucked the trend and fell.

The ChiNext Index, tracking China's Nasdaq-style board of growth enterprises, gained 5.91 percent to close at 3,347.61 points.

The STAR Composite Index, which reflects the performance of stocks on China's sci-tech innovation board, closed 5.64 percent higher at 1,738.35 points.