The Vietnam-China People Friendship Festival 2010 is an event of important significance to help further enrich the content of the two countries’ comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership, said Deputy National Assembly Chairwoman Tong Thi Phong.

She was addressing the opening ceremony for the Vietnam-China People Friendship Festival in Hanoi on December 11.

The festival was co-organised by the Vietnam Union of Friendship Organisations (VUFO), the Vietnam-China Friendship Association, the Chinese People’s External Friendship Association and the China-Vietnam Friendship Association.

Phong said 2010 marks the 60 th anniversary of Vietnam-China diplomatic ties and the Vietnam-China Friendship year so many practical activities have been held in the two countries.

These activities have contributed to further affirming and enhancing the traditional friendship of “both comrades and brothers” which has been built and fostered by the late Presidents Ho Chi Minh and Mao Zedong and generations of revolutionaries and which is viewed as a valuable asset of the Vietnamese and Chinese nations, Phong stressed.

According to VUFO President Vu Xuan Hong, the festival, under the theme “upholding the tradition to enhance friendship and promote cooperation for mutual development”, aims to disseminate information on the friendship and traditional cooperative ties between the two countries.

Reviewing the Vietnam-China relations over the past 60 years, the VUFO official asserted that the friendship is a valuable asset of the Vietnamese and Chinese people.

Hong noted that promoting the friendship and comprehensive cooperation is indispensable for each country’s development, while meeting the two peoples’ aspiration and desires, and being an important factor to peace and development in the region and the world.

He said in recent years, the two countries’ relations have been reinforced and expanded to all fields and that friendship and exchange activities have also been stepped up from the central to grassroots levels, among people of all walks of life and especially among young people.

President of the Chinese People’s External Friendship Association Chen Haosu emphasised that upholding the mutually agreed motto and spirit of “good neighbours, good friends, good comrades and good partners”, cooperation and exchange between the two countries at all levels and in all areas have been deepened, serving as a firm foundation for the development of the China-Vietnam ties in the long term to meet the people’s fundamental interests.

Chen proposed that the two sides need to regularly carry out friendly activities in diverse forms, mobilise people of all walks of life to participate in and support the friendship cause, work together to create an atmosphere of friendship, and attach importance to further promoting the traditional friendship and neghbourliness.

The two sides need to deal seriously and calmly with existing disputes in the two countries’ ties and have a confidence in the two parties and governments to appropriately settle those problems, Chen said, noting that the people’s growing mutual trust will lift the China-Vietnam friendship and cooperation to a new height.

“We are ready to work together with the Vietnamese people with a vision toward the great common cause and the future to enhance mutual trust and cooperation and further enrich the content of the agreed motto and spirit to deepen the China-Vietnam ties in a healthy and stable manner,” Chen said.

On the occasion, the organising board reviewed a contest of knowledge about Vietnam-China friendly ties.

A ceremony was held later at the National Conventional Hall to introduce books on Vietnam-China friendship./.