Photo:VCG

China and Kazakhstan's permanent comprehensive strategic partnership has reached a new height in recent years, Chinese Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang said on Monday during talks with Kazakhstan's First Deputy Prime Minister Roman Sklyar in Astana, while calling on the two sides to properly handle challenges and firmly oppose external interference, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

Ding, also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, made the remarks when holding talks and co-chairing the 11th Meeting of the China-Kazakhstan Cooperation Committee with Sklyar.

China stands ready to work with Kazakhstan to enhance the role of the institutional platform of their cooperation committee and strengthen exchanges and contacts among the subcommittees to add new impetus to mutually beneficial cooperation, Ding noted, calling on the two sides to advance cooperation in key areas such as economy, trade, production capacity and interconnectivity.

The vice premier also called for more cooperation in the fields of modern agriculture, new energy, big data and artificial intelligence.

He stressed that China and Kazakhstan should properly handle challenges, firmly oppose external interference, enhance stable and transparent policy support and legal guarantees, and create favorable conditions for cooperation between enterprises of the two countries.

Ding spoke highly of the new achievements made by the two sides in the fields of economy and trade, production capacity, financial cooperation, interconnectivity, people-to-people exchanges and security cooperation since the 10th meeting of the committee.

For his part, Sklyar said Kazakhstan attaches great importance to the permanent comprehensive strategic partnership with China, adding that Kazakhstan is willing to enhance the important consensus reached by the two heads of state, give full play to the committee, deepen practical cooperation with China and lift bilateral relations to a new level.

"In the current geopolitical context, China is the nearest and most accessible major market," Kazakh Minister of Trade and Integration Arman Shakkaliev told the Global Times in an exclusive interview at this year's China International Import Expo (CIIE) in Shanghai earlier this month. "Participation in the CIIE provides us with a great opportunity to promote Kazakh products in this vast market."

Global Times