Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli visits Albania to Boost China-Albania Relations

China's Zhang Gaoli meeting with Albania's PM Edi Rama in Tirana

Tirana, Albania | Tirana Echo – China’s first-ranked Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli visited Albania this week where he met with the country’s leaders, in what is seen another high level visit to boost Chinese presence in the small Balkan country.

Zhang a member of the Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China, China’s highest ruling council, said that China and Albania enjoy traditional friendship, while China does not forget that Albania is one of the first countries establishing diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China and advocating on its behalf at the UN since the early days.

The vice premier added that “China is satisfied with the sound development momentum of bilateral relations, and is willing to work with Albania to further consolidate bilateral traditional friendship, deepen practical cooperation between the two countries, respect and accommodate each other’s core interests and major concerns, in a bid to promote greater development of bilateral relations.

In recent years, China-Albania relations have maintained steady and healthy development. The two countries boast frequent high-level exchanges, constantly deep political mutual trust and continuously further cooperation in economy, trade, investment, people-to-people and cultural engagement and other areas.

Zhang Gaoli said to Albania’s President Bujar Nishani that under the framework of the “Belt and Road” construction and the “16+1 Cooperation” proposed by President Xi Jinping, China is willing to combine Albania’s strengths and its practical needs to advance bilateral practical cooperation in major fields such as transportation infrastructure, production capacity, tourism and agriculture, speed up the negotiation and signing of intergovernmental memorandum of understanding on jointly pushing forward the “Belt and Road” construction, further enhance planning and guidance of bilateral practical cooperation, and strive for more concrete achievements, so as to benefit both countries and the two peoples.

Strategically located in both land and sea transport passageways in southeast Europe, Albania represents a special geographical point for China’s expanding interests across Europe, given the ‘old friendship’ between the two countries.

Albania’s PM Edi Rama has told Zhang Gaoli during his visit that “Albania and China enjoy profound traditional friendship, and Albania welcomes Chinese enterprises to invest and establish business in the country.”

It is hoped that the two sides, under the framework of the “Belt and Road” construction and the “16 + 1 Cooperation”, could find a number of projects that can yield results as soon as possible, and truly implement bilateral practical cooperation.

Albania has had a political romance with the Chinese since the days of Soviet Communism, and now it’s become an economic one. While the U.S. remains focused on criminal justice and other reforms, China is focusing on development. As a result, despite being across the Adriatic Sea from Italy, Albania is as close to China in many respects as it is to its leading trading partners, slowly turning into China’s magnet in Europe.

During the last year alone, China’s Geo-Jade Petroleum, a publicly traded oil company listed in Shanghai, bought controlling rights in two Albanian oil fields then controlled by Canada-based Banker’s Petroleum for a cool $442.3 million. On another bid, state-owned asset manager China Everbright and Hong-Kong based Friedman Pacific Asset Management bought Albania’s Tirana International Airport in a concession deal that has the Chinese co-owning Albania’s only commercial airport for the next 10 years. Within the first four months of 2016, China increased trade to become the second largest trading partner for Albania.

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