Mr. Chairman,

First, the Chinese Delegation expresses its congratulations on your election to the chair of this session.  We believe that under the outstanding leadership of you and other members of the bureau, this session will be able to accomplish all its tasks with great success as expected.

The past two years have witnessed gratifying achievements in the field of TCDC.  The Buenos Aires Plan of Action is being further implemented.  The adoption of the new directions strategy for TCDC has accomplished remarkable results, particularly in areas of national capacity building, regional and inter-regional cooperation and triangular cooperation. Relevant agencies of the United Nations have incorporated TCDC in the whole programme, making it part of the mainstream cooperation.  In retrospect, I can not but to mention the unremitting efforts made by the Special Unit for TCDC in this regard.

In the trend of economic globalization, developing countries face different challenges as well as opportunities due to their different levels of economic and social development.  As a whole, however, they are all in an unfavorable position of competition.  Therefore, they must strengthen their cooperation with one another, overcome difficulties and identify their common entering points for economic and social development, so as to stand up together to the challenge of globalization.  In this aspect, one has to mention, TCDC is an effective instrument for developing countries to work together against all the difficulties and challenges.  

Mr. Chairman,

Since the 1978 Buenos Aires Conference on TCDC, the vast number of developing countries have taken an active part in TCDC with their many tentative efforts and have accumulated a lot of experience in this field.  It has been demonstrated that TCDC will only have a stronger vitality after its integration with ECDC.  TCDC should, building on its existing foundation, seek to expand to fields such as trade, investment and finance, work vigorously to enhance cooperation between the industrial and commercial, financial and business circles so as to promote economic development in developing countries and prevent things like the Asia Financial Crisis from happening again in developing countries.

Mr. Chairman,

As both its initiator and participator, China has always attached great importance to TCDC.  China has made investment for building more than ten regional training and research cooperation centers, involving such areas as small hydro-power plants, biogas, sericulture, acupuncture, pesticides and edible fungi.  So far, tens of thousands of professionals from developing countries have been trained in these centers.  Every year, China allocates special funds for multi-lateral and bilateral TCDC activities, including training professionals from other countries in China, sending Chinese experts to serve in other countries and providing necessary equipment.  Last year, China donated $150,000 dollars to establish a trust fund at the Special Unit for TCDC.  This year, China's donation has increased to $250,000 dollars.

Mr. Chairman,

As you know, in the year 2000, Beijing successfully hosted the first China-Africa Ministerial Conference on Cooperation, known as the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, Ministerial Conference Beijing 2000.  At the conference, the Chinese Government declared to exempt the debts owed it by other developing countries by RMB 10 billion yuan and encouraged Chinese enterprises to invest in other developing countries.  Now, the two sides are working on the implementation of relevant follow-up activities.  In the future, China will continue to make an effort within its own capacity to carry out economic and technical cooperation with other developing countries.

Mr. Chairman,

I have noted with satisfaction that in the past two years relevant international organizations and some developed countries have actively supported TCDC activities, which has been an effective guarantee for the good outcomes in the field of TCDC.  We sincerely hope that, in the time to come, more international organizations and developed countries will support and take part in TCDC, work to strengthen triangular cooperation and provide more financial support to TCDC.  On the other hand, the Special Unit for TCDC should strengthen its research work, trying to explore effective ways for better cooperation so as to provide efficient consultancy for TCDC.  All in all, I sincerely hope that relevant parties will be able to work together to push TCDC to a higher stage.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.