National Assembly Speaker Prof. Dr Slavica Djukic-Dejanovic received a delegation of the People Republic of China’s Gansu Province headed by the Speaker of the Gansu Provincial Assembly Lu Hao, member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

The officials agreed that the traditionally good relations between the two countries and peoples provide an excellent basis for the improvement of parliamentary cooperation which would in turn motivate the improvement of overall relations between Serbia and China. Djukic-Dejanovic extended Serbia’s gratitude on the People Republic of China’s principled support regarding the unilaterally declared independence of Kosovo.

Hao stressed the importance of regional economic cooperation and expressed a wish that Gansu Province become twinned with a Serbian region seeing how the centres of Gansu Province - Lanzhou and Leskovac have been sister cities since July 2007 and have developed joint agricultural projects. Commending the example of twinning of these two administrative centres in the context of development of bilateral economic relations, the Assembly Speaker invited potential Chinese investors to continue to invest into Serbia since the NARS had adopted a series of documents creating the appropriate atmosphere for safe investment.

The Assembly Speaker stressed that parliamentary cooperation should be improved particularly by intensifying contacts between assembly bodies and friendship groups. She thanked the President of China’s National People’s Congress Wu Bangguo for the invitation to pay an official visit to PR China and issued a return invitation to Wu Bangguo to be the guest of the National Assembly in the upcoming months.

“By gaining candidacy status Serbia shall be in a much better position to improve trade, so in this sense I expect that Serbia shall represent a bridge between China and the EU”, said the Assembly Speaker.