Vietnamese Ambassador to China said China’s Guangxi and Vietnam’s border localities should boost their cooperation in various fields including economics, culture, society, education-training and crime prevention and fight. Ambassador Nguyen Van Tho made the statement when he visited Guangxi on April 16 and had a meeting with Peng Qinghua, Party Secretary and Chairman of the Standing Committee of the People’s Congress of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region of China.

The two sides expressed their pleasure at the sound development in cooperation between Vietnamese localities and Guangxi since the two countries signed the land border agreement. Over the past several years, Guangxi and Vietnamese border provinces such as Quang Ninh, Lang Son, Cao Bang and Ha Giang have developed stable and close ties in various areas. Two-way trade reached over US$9.7 billion, up over 28 percent, making up 80 percent of the total trade turnover between Chinese Guangxi and ASEAN countries. Tho also asked Guangxi to cooperate with Vietnam’s border provinces in fighting trans-national crimes, maintaining social order and security in the border areas shared by both countries, and well implementing the Protocol on Border Demarcation and Marker Planting, the Agreement on Border Management Regulations and the Agreement on Border Gates and Land Border Gate Management Regulations between Vietnam and China. In reply, Peng Qinghua told the Ambassador that he believes that the cooperation between Guangxi and Vietnamese provinces will continue to develop well in the future. The two sides should work together to establish the trans-border Dongxing-Mong Cai economic cooperation zone and to step up tourism cooperation, he said.