Xi, who was accompanied by his wife Peng Liyuan, touched down in Harare just after 1000am and was met by his Zimbabwean counterpart President Robert Mugabe amid a colourful mix of Chinese and Zimbabwean pageantry.
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Speaking at a banquet hosted for the Chinese leader and his delegation last night, shortly after signing several agreements among them a $1.4 billion deal for upgrading the Hwange Thermal Power station, Mr. Mugabe said he was excited significant progress had been made in the implementation of projects agreed between China and Zimbabwe.
The foundation of the China-Africa friendship lies in the people, and the media are an important channel for both sides to communicate and learn from each other, Xi said in his congratulatory message.
French President Francois Hollande, left, greets China’s President Xi Jinping as he arrives for the COP21, United Nations Climate Change Conference, in Le Bourget, outside Paris, Monday, Nov. 30, 2015.
The International Cooperation Centre – National Development Reform Commission of China’s director general Cao Wenlian on Monday told a China-Zimbabwe Business Forum that it was considering putting Zimbabwe on priority list of African countries that Beijing targets for investment, alongside Angola, Egypt, Ethiopia, Mozambique and South Africa.
South African state owned enterprises including Eskom, Transnet, the Industrial Development Corporation, SA National Space Agency and the SA Nuclear Corporation also signed deals with Chinese institutions. A 21-gun salute was sacked in his honour as Zimbabwe pulled out all the stops to welcome the leader of the world’s second-largest economy.
Bimha said the value of the agreements would only be disclosed later on Tuesday.
Cao said China was working with a team in the financial services sector on the circulation of the Chinese currency, yuan in Zimbabwe and may consider developing models such as the Ethiopian one, where China gives credit and the country may pay back in tobacco for instance. China has invested in construction, energy and telecommunications projects in Zimbabwe.
For years, the consolidation of Sino-African relations has been the cornerstone of China’s diplomacy; never forgetting African brothers reflects the Chinese people’s faith over never forgetting about its past sufferings.
Mugabe, who has often been accused of repression and human rights abuses, was in October awarded the Confucius Peace Prize, a would-be Chinese rival to the Nobel Prize.
Reports show China had poured in as much as US$600m in investment into Zimbabwe by 2013; the figure is expected to have grown significantly in the past two years.
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The Chinese president flies to Johannesburg on Wednesday ahead of a China-Africa summit.
