Advisor to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz Friday, terming Pakistan and China as “Iron Brothers” said the great friendship between the two has stood the tests of time and has moved from strength to strength under successive generations of leaders of both the countries. In the past four years, he added, it is crossed new thresholds and culminated in CPEC.
Addressing the inaugural ceremony of China-Pakistan Study Centre (CPSC) set up at the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad (ISSI) here, Sartaj said the strategic cooperative partnership must also include enhanced, pragmatic and meaningful cooperation in research, academia and science and technology.
“I believe this study centre will be a promising addition to providing a dynamic platform for scholars of both the countries to jointly pursue research projects on many areas of common interests, further promoting and cementing academic and scholarly exchanges between Pakistan and China,” he said.
Think-tanks and study centres are the nerve-centres of ideas and policy initiative necessary for overall development and growth of countries, Sartaj said, adding they provide vision and guidelines to embark on the journey of prosperity and progress.
“I am confident that the timely initiative of establishing this centre will provide the policymakers and intelligentsia with the key resources to fully understand contours of bilateral relations between Pakistan and China.”
It goes without saying, he said, that China’s rise and economic pre-eminence is creating a new, economically prosperous and vibrant region.
“We in the region are fortunate to be at the centre of these dynamic changes. Together we must employ our academic and research resources to promote regional connectivity, trade, cultural, economic and people-to-people linkages, to create sustainable development and prosperity,” he said.
In the context of the far-reaching Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and its flagship project China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), this study centre would prove to be a milestone for promoting academic exchanges and linking up think-tanks of both countries, he said.
The Chinese Ambassador to Pakistan Sun Weidong, addressing the inaugural ceremony, said China’s initiative of connecting the regional countries through One Belt, One Road (OBOR) is carrying the spirit of peaceful cooperation that would be beneficial for all the countries in the region due to enhanced connectivity.
He said that CPEC is the pilot project of BRI. The China-Pakistan friendship is based on mutual respect, trust, and support, he added.
He said the establishment of CPSC is the manifestation of the strong friendly relations between the two countries.
He said the people are interested to know more about China and its relations with the external world. People wanted to know how China developed and emerged as the second largest economy in the world, he added.
The ambassador, highlighting the reasons behind quick development of China, said the strong leadership of the Communist Party, peaceful development, hardworking nature of the Chinese people, peaceful coexistence, respecting sovereignty of other countries, and its history of never seeking expansion and hegemony enabled to achieve what it did in such a short span of time.
The ISSI Chairman Ambassador Khalid Mahmood said the CPEC is the stimulus for the establishment of the CPSC. He said the centre would carry out research on China’s culture, education and society.
