On April 24, 2002, Vice President Hu Jintao, on an official visit to Malaysia, held talks with Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.

Badawi spoke highly of Malaysia-China friendly relations. He expressed that Malysia will widen the cooperation with China in the fields of economy and trade, science and technology, education, tourism and medicine, and join with China to explore the new channels and new fields of bilateral exchanges and cooperation.

Hu agreed with Badawi's evaluation of bilateral relations. He said that in recent years, with joint efforts, China-Malaysia relations have entered a new stage of all-round development and exchanges and cooperation in all fields have been active. There have been frequent exchange of visits between the Chinese Communist Party and Malaysia National Front and the United Malay National Organization. The two countries also signed a cultural cooperation agreement.

Hu said that the trade volume between the two countries reached 9.4 billion U.S. dollars last year, up 17 percent over the previous year. It is not easy to achieve such a result against the background that the growth of the global economy and trade was slowing down.

Hu said that as developing countries, China and Malaysia share broad consensus and conducted good coordination and cooperation in the fight against power politics and in meeting the challenges of economic globalization, safeguarding the rightful interests of the developing countries and enhancing cooperation among East Asian countries, particularly scoring remarkable achievements in the 10+3 cooperation in East Asia.

Hu appreciated Malaysia's adherence to One China policy and its support of China in the international human rights struggle as well as its efforts in promoting Sino-ASEAN relations.

To further bilateral relations, Hu expressed the hope that leaders of the two countries would continue exchange of visits, expand exchanges and cooperation at different levels and in various fields, bring into play each other's advantages, and strengthen cooperation in agriculture, high-tech, resources development, infrastructure construction and tourism in particular.

He also called for efforts to promote 10+3 cooperation and ASEAN Economic Forum as well as regional economic cooperation in Pan-Asian Railway construction and Mekong River Basin development.

The two leaders held that efforts should be made to maintain stability in the South China Sea and agreed to conduct positive consultations on reaching an agreement of code of conduct on the South China Sea.