President of Cuba to make 3-day state visit

First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez will make a state visit to China from Thursday to Saturday.

He was invited by President Xi Jinping, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, according to a Foreign Ministry news release.

The visit comes amid Xi's intensive diplomatic engagement with foreign leaders through in-person bilateral or multilateral meetings after the 20th CPC National Congress in October.

The Cuban president will be the first head of state from Latin America and the Caribbean to visit China after the 20th CPC National Congress, and it is believed that the visit will inject fresh vitality into the bilateral ties and advance the countries' traditional friendship and friendly cooperation, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said on Monday.

Speaking at a regular news conference, Mao said that Cuba was the first Latin American and Caribbean country to establish diplomatic relations with China. She described China and Cuba as "good friends, good comrades and good brothers "who trust each other and enjoy a shared future.

Since they established diplomatic ties 62 years ago, the two countries have joined hands to march forward on the path to build a socialist country with their own characteristics amid profound changes of the international landscape, Mao said.

They support each other on the issues that matter to their respective core interests and coordinate closely in international and regional affairs, setting an example of socialist countries promoting unity and cooperation as well as developing countries helping each other with sincerity, she added.

In an interview with the People's Daily in October, Cuban Ambassador to China Carlos Miguel Pereira Hernandez said: "The special character of our bilateral ties is a historic consensus, which reaches today an unprecedented solidity, by virtue of the high level of political mutual trust, the broad coordination of positions in the international arena and the multidimensional and full development of our ties."

In the last two years, even in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the two countries' exchanges and cooperation between political parties, governments, legislatures and other sectors have continued to expand, and they have maintained close coordination and cooperation both bilaterally and in international organizations, he said.