Hollande meets Chinese envoy, calls for closer ties

France's president-elect Francois Hollande waves to his supporters/XINHUA
PARIS, May 8 – French president-elect Francois Hollande on Monday vowed to further the Sino-French exchange and cooperation in a meeting with Kong Quan, the Chinese Ambassador to France.

Hollande said France recognizes China’s important influence over international politics and economy, and would like to see continuous development in a friendly and cooperative relationship between the two countries.

Talking to Kong in Paris before meeting other ambassadors, the president-elect said France and China should continue to strengthen coordination and collaboration in G20 and other international and regional hot issues.

Meanwhile, France wish to push forward economic and trade cooperation, and expand mutual investment, Hollande said.

The president-elect received a congratulatory message from Chinese President Hu Jintao and asked the ambassador to pass on his gratitude and respect to Hu.

The long-time friendship and cooperation between China and France conforms to the fundamental interests of the two countries and their citizens and also is significant in safeguarding and promoting global peace, stability and development, Hu said in his congratulatory message.

The Socialist, who beat the incumbent President Nicolas Sarkozy on Sunday’s second round runoff with 51.6 percent of the votes, will become the second left-wing president of the French Fifth Republic.

XINHUA

Xinhua News Agency, founded on November 7, 1931, is China’s national news agency as well as a global news and information network. Xinhua has set up a global news and information gathering network, with headquarters in Beijing, 33 domestic bureaus in provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities plus the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macao, as well as 140 bureaus in the rest of the world. Xinhua is yet to set up a bureau in Taiwan, where it has posted resident correspondents. Xinhua provides its worldwide subscribers with news and financial information products in the forms of text, photo, graphics, audio, video, and mobile phone text messages 24 hours a day in eight languages: Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese and Japanese.