On Thursday, to mark International Children’s Day, China and the Organisation of African First Ladies for Development (OPDAD) launched the “Warming Children’s Hearts: A Joint China-Africa Action” initiative to raise public awareness and show their love and care for African children.
As part of the initiative, African children received greetings, aid, and medical assistance from China during the event.
This is not the first time that China has organized an event to help Africans. The event “A CLOSE FRIENDSHIP BETWEEN PEOPLE” was recently initiated by Peng Liyuan, wife of Chinese President Xi Jinping, and OPDAD. In the Republic of Congo, the Chinese embassy in Brazzaville presented gifts to children from an adoption center. Doctors from the 29th Chinese medical team in the country carried out physical examinations on the children.
China and the Democratic Republic of Congo have enjoyed a relationship of friendship and solidarity over the years, a relationship based on respect, love, and humanism. The DRC itself helped China in 2010 when a magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck the Tibetan autonomous prefecture of Yushu in Qinghai. The President of the Republic of Congo, Denis Sassou Nguesso, announced that his country would help rebuild a primary school in the region affected by the quake.
Over the past six decades, China and Africa, whose peoples enjoy close ties, have enjoyed increasingly intense win-win cooperation.
In April 1955, the Bandung Conference was held in Indonesia, where Chinese and African leaders shook hands, marking the beginning of friendly exchanges between the two sides. Since then, China has supported Africa’s just cause in its struggle against imperialism and colonialism and for national liberation. For their part, African countries have supported China in re-establishing its rightful seat at the United Nations.
In 2013, China put forward the principles of sincerity, real results, friendship, and good faith, and the pursuit of the common good and shared interests to guide its cooperation with Africa. Sino-African relations have entered an accelerated phase towards a stronger Sino-African community of destiny.
Since the beginning of the year, three African presidents have visited China. During his meeting with the President of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Félix-Antoine Tshisekedi Tshilombo, in Beijing, Mr. Xi said that China resolutely supported Africa in its pursuit of an independent development path and in its desire to become an important pole of world politics, economics, and civilization, adding that China was ready to offer new opportunities to African countries as part of its new development.