Nguyen Phu Trong, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, left for China on Oct. 11 for a five-day official visit at the invitation of Hu Jintao, General Secretary of the Communist Party and President of China.

The key objective of the visit is to promote the Vietnam-China Strategic and Comprehensive Cooperative Partnership.

Since the normalisation of Sino-Vietnam relationships in 1991, the friendship and cooperation between the two nations to have rapidly developed in all domains and brought about practical benefits to both sides.

Many agreements have been concluded and they served as solid foundations for long- term cooperation between Vietnam and China .

During the visit to China by the then Party General Secretary Le Kha Phieu in February 1999, senior leaders from the two countries agreed on the principle guiding their relationship in the 21 st century as “Friendly neighbourliness, comprehensive cooperation, long lasting stability and future oriented vision.”

And during the visit to China by former Party General Secretary Nong Duc Manh in May 2008, the two sides agreed to develop their relationships to “strategic comprehensive cooperative partnership”.

In 2010, the two countries celebrated the 60 th anniversary of diplomatic relations with many practical and significant activities.

Since 2004, China has become a leading trade partner of Vietnam and bilateral trade turnover keeps increasing.

In July 2010, the number of Chinese direct investment projects in Vietnam stood at 805 with capital registered at about 4.2 billion USD.

China now ranks the 14 th among the 92 countries and territories invested in the nation./.