Zhou Haibing, vice governor of Hunan Province and mayor of Changsha City, met in Changsha with a Lao delegation on the afternoon of September 11, 2024. The delegation was led by Bualy Phetsongkharm, member of the Standing Committee of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party (LPRP) of Champasak Province, secretary of the LPRP Pakse Municipal Committee, and mayor of Pakse City. Somkhit Vankham, Laos consul general to Changsha; Zhou Min, vice mayor of Changsha City; and, Xu Fan, secretary general of Changsha Municipal People's Government, attended.

Zhou Haibing meets with a Lao delegation of Pakse City. (Photo/Guo Yudi, Changsha Evening News)

Vice Governor Zhou welcomed the guests. He noted that China and Laos are friendly socialist neighbors. The two countries are linked by mountains and rivers, enjoying a longstanding friendship. Hunan and Laos have a deep historical affinity, and Changsha, the provincial capital city, has deepened all-round cooperation with Laos in various fields. Changsha has been thoroughly studying and implementing the spirit of the Third Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee and President Xi Jinping's important speeches and instructions made during his inspection tours in Hunan. It has made concerted efforts to the "Three Hubs" construction, stepping up the building of Changsha into a global R&D center city.

Pakse City of Laos and Changsha City have a broad space for cooperation. He expected the two sides to take advantage of the RCEP and the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor, further expanding the economic and trade channels. Both sides may deepen pragmatic collaboration in such fields as manufacturing, environmental protection, urban construction and management, agricultural investment, and agricultural production technology, and strengthen the regular people-to-people exchanges, so as to elevate the cooperative relations between the two sides to a new level continuously.

Bualy Phetsongkharm hoped that the two regions would give full play to their advantageous resource endowments, extending closer exchanges, expanding friendship and cooperation in various fields, and achieving more high-quality cooperation results. We should make more contributions for the benefits of the peoples of the two countries and the building of a China-Laos community with a shared future, he said.