From June 23 to 27, 2010, President Hu Jintao, at invitation, paid a state visit to Canada and attended the fourth G20 summit in Toronto. At the end of the visit, Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi who also present at the tour introduced President Hu’s visit and outcome to the accompanying journalists.

Yang said that President Hu’s visit is a major diplomatic activity China conducted against the background that China-Canada diplomatic ties have the 40th anniversary, the bilateral relations show a sound momentum of development, the global economy gradually recovers but the foundation remains weak and the European sovereign debt risk is on the rise. The international media paid high attention to the visit. Within a short period of 4 days, President Hu conducted intensive diplomatic activities, including attending more than 30 bilateral and multilateral activities. From the perspective of promoting long-term development of China-Canada relations, he reached out to all parties carefully and extensively, elaborated profoundly China’s important proposition on boosting China-Canada pragmatic cooperation and pushing forward bilateral strategic partnership under new circumstances. Starting from a strategic height, he comprehensively expounded China’s position and proposals on promoting the complete recovery of world economy and guiding the transition of G20, which is very important for the summit to achieve positive results in strengthening the coordination of macroeconomic policies of countries, comprehensively implementing the consensus reached by G20 during its previous three summits and strengthening the institutional construction of G20. With great foresight and being practical, efficient and fruitful, President Hu’s visit achieved full success.

He noted that China-Canada relations in general maintain a positive momentum of development, bilateral cooperation in all fields grows rapidly, the Canadian side is keen to developing relations with China and bilateral cooperation enjoys great potential and promising prospects. Meanwhile, with different national conditions, China and Canada unavoidably hold different views on certain issues, but there is no fundamental conflict of interest between the two countries whose common interest far exceeds differences. During the visit, in the spirit of “strengthening dialogue, enhancing mutual trust, expanding cooperation and heading into the future”, President Hu exchanged in-depth opinions with Canadian leaders and people from all walks of society, explained the importance and urgency of developing bilateral relations under new situation from a strategic point of view and stressed that both sides should adhere to the correct direction of bilateral relations and make joint efforts to comprehensively push forward the development of China-Canada strategic partnership. The Canadian side agrees on President Hu’s important proposition on developing bilateral relations and indicated that China-Canada relationship has become one of the most important bilateral relations in the world. It firmly and explicitly pursues the one-China policy and believes that to respect each other’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity is the basis of handling bilateral relations. It is willing to join hands with China to maintain exchanges of high-level visit, further broaden the pragmatic cooperation in the fields of trade, investment, energy and resources and boost the development of bilateral strategic partnership. The two sides reiterated commitment to developing the bilateral strategic partnership and creating a promising future for bilateral relations.

Pragmatic cooperation in various fields constitutes the foundation of China-Canada relations. One important aim of President Hu’s visit is to guide China-Canada economic and trade cooperation towards a larger scale, a wider range and a higher level. He delivered an important speech entitled Comprehensively Promoting China-Canada Strategic Partnership and stressed that to deepen China-Canada economic and trade cooperation serves the fundamental interest of both countries and their people and is a necessary requirement of comprehensively advancing China-Canada strategic partnership. China and Canada enjoy strong economic complementarities and a vast space of cooperation, in particular enjoys great potential of economic and trade cooperation. He proposed five points of suggestion on boosting China-Canada economic and trade cooperation which were responded positively by the Canadian side. During the visit, leaders of both countries agreed to raise the bilateral trade volume to US$60 billion by 2015. Government agencies and enterprises of both sides signed 10 cooperation agreements involving economy and trade, tourism, quality inspection, law enforcement, energy and mining.

Cultural exchange is of great significance to consolidating the public opinion basis of China-Canada relations. Aiming at deepening the friendship between the two peoples, President Hu announced the decision to establish the Chinese culture center in Canada and invite 100 Canadian local education officials and principals of primary and middle schools to visit China this year and 100 Canadian middle school students to attend summer camp in China next year. Related government agencies of both countries officially signed the tourism destination agreement, opening a new chapter of cultural exchange between China and Canada.

All circles of society and the media of Canada responded positively to President Hu’s visit and agreed that the visit plays an important role of lifting up Canada-China relations.

Yang said that the main task of the Toronto summit was discussing such key global issues as the world economic and financial situation, the “Framework for Strong, Sustainable and Balanced Growth”, reform of international financial institutions and international financial supervision. It will influence not only the direction of global economic development and adjustment of international pattern but also the external environment for China’s efforts of accelerating change of the economic growth mode and economic restructuring. All parties paid close attention to President Hu’s presence and China’s position and proposition and held fairly high expectations.

Making an important speech entitled Working Together to Create the Future to the summit, President Hu comprehensively elaborated China’s views on the current world economic situation and appealed to all parties to continue to help each other in order to bring the world economy into the new stage of strong, sustainable and balanced growth as soon as possible. He raised three proposals to that end: to promote the transition of G20 from an effective mechanism of tackling the international financial crisis to a key platform of promoting the international economic cooperation; to accelerate the building of a fair, just, inclusive and orderly new international financial order; to build an open and free global trade system. Both reflecting the proposition and concerns of the Chinese side and complying with the common and long-term interest of the international community, his speech received warm responses from the participants, the international community and the media which all believe China is standing on the international arena in a more mature and responsible attitude and plays an increasingly role in the international political and economic affairs.

As to the development direction of G20 mechanism in the post-crisis era, President Hu emphasized the importance of promoting the shift of G20 focus from collaboration of economic stimulus to coordination of growth, from short-term emergency response to long-term effective governance and from passive response to active planning. He appealed to strengthen the coordination of G20 members’ macroeconomic policies, push forward G20’s institutional construction in the principle of step-by-step progress and mutual benefit, properly handle contradictions and differences, ensure the progress of G20 summit mechanism along a healthy track and enable G20 to play a core role of boosting the international economic cooperation and in the global economic governance. Those views and propositions were widely accepted and responded by participating leaders who noted that G20, no matter in terms of representativeness, effectiveness or flexibility, should play a core role in global economic governance and its position as the major platform of international economic cooperation is irreplaceable.

On the issue of how to build the “Framework for Strong, Sustainable and Balanced Growth”, President Hu stressed that the harmonization among strong growth, sustainable growth and balanced growth must be achieved. Strong growth is the basis of world economic development, sustainable growth is the target, and balanced growth is the means. He also introduced China’s policy and proposition of boosting strong growth, maintaining continuity and stability of macroeconomic policy and realizing sustainable and balanced growth and expounded the strategic deployment of scientific development concept and accelerating change of economic growth mode. The approach and “framework” concept of changing economic growth mode are interconnected. China is willing to learn from the experiences of, conduct equal cooperation and seek common development with other countries. His views aroused strong resonance from all the participating parties, especially developing countries which widely believe his speech is objective, balanced, deep, thorough and exactly to the point and guides the correct direction of world economic development.

With regard to the common concern of members on strengthening international financial supervision, President Hu proposed the basis principle of promoting international financial supervision. On the issue of share reform of IMF, he stressed the importance of speeding up the completion of IMF’s share adjustment, increasing the representativeness and voice of developing countries and reinforcing its capacity building and supervision reform. In response to the monopoly of a few of credit rating agencies on sovereign credit rating, he pointed out the direction of reform of international credit rating agencies. His suggestions received welcome from developing members and the majority of developed members.

When attending the summit, President Hu also held bilateral meetings with US President Obama, Russian President Medvedev, British Prime Minister Cameron, Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan, Indonesian President Susilo and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak to exchange in-depth views on deepening political mutual trust, developing bilateral relations, promoting pragmatic cooperation and boosting the healthy and stable development of G20, which effectively pushed forward China’s relations with relevant countries.

Yang said finally that President Hu’s visit achieved the scheduled targets of lifting up China-Canada strategic partnership, promoting the healthy development of G20 and boosting the complete recovery of world economy. China is willing to further deepen relations with Canada and join hands with G20 members to build a better tomorrow for world economy!