On the morning of November 9, Chinese President Hu Jitnao, who was on his state visit to the UK, met in the Parliament Building with Speaker of the House of Lords Lord Falconer, Speaker of the House of Commons Michael J. Martin and members of UK-China Group of the House of Commons and held cordial and friendly talks with them.

Hu briefed the members of parliament (MP) on the current development of bilateral relations, pointing our that China attaches great importance to developing relations with the UK and both sides have established comprehensive strategic partnership and leaders' annual meeting mechanism and conducted close consultations and coordination in international affairs with cooperation in the areas of trade, science and technology, education, culture and tourism continuously expanded. The development of bilateral relations enjoys bright prospect and will surely score more fruitful achievements and bring benefits to both peoples.

Hu indicated that the exchanges between legislatures have become an important part of bilateral comprehensive strategic partnership and played an important role for pushing for bilateral exchanges and cooperation. We welcome more MP friends to visit China and further strengthen their understanding of China.

Hu also introduced China's economic and social developments, stressing that we will adhere to the people-oriented, comprehensive, coordinated and sustainable scientific development concept, apply the mind to development and push for all-round progress in the areas of economy, politics, culture and society. China will unswervingly take the road of peaceful development, adhere to opening to the outside world, commit to developing friendly cooperation with all other countries around the world based on equality and mutual benefits and make its own contributions to the lofty cause of promoting peace and development of mankind.

Speaker of the House of Lords Lord Falconer and Speaker of the House of Commons Martin delivered speeches respectively to welcome Hu for his visit to the UK. They held that bilateral friendly relations remain vigorous with cooperation areas steadily expanded and development basis increasingly consolidated. Both of them emphasized that the UK Parliament supports establishing continuous and long-lasting cooperation between both sides and commits to further expanding exchanges with China's legislature and learning from each other.

On the morning of the same day, Hu also met with the staff of the Chinese Embassy in the UK, representatives from Chinese-funded institutions, overseas Chinese in the UK and Chinese students studying in the UK. In his speech, Hu expressed hope that they will continue to unite as one and make joint efforts in bid to make new contributions to promoting the friendship between both peoples and realizing great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.