At the invitation of Foreign Minister Mudenge, Chinese Foreign Minister Tang paid an official visit to Zimbabwe from January 13 to 15, during which he met with President Mugabe and Vice President Muzenda and had talks with Foreign Minister Mudenge. The two sides signed an agreement on the establishment of a political consultation mechanism between the Foreign Ministries of the two countries and exchanged notes on bilateral economic cooperation.


During the meetings and talks, Foreign Minister Tang noted that this year marked the 20th anniversary of the independence of Zimbabwe and 20th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between China and Zimbabwe, two red-letter days to celebrate. In the past two decades, our two countries had rendered mutual understanding, mutual assistance and mutual support to each other and conducted beneficial cooperation in good faith in bilateral and international affairs. Envisaging the future, he was confident that the China-Zimbabwe friendship could only get stronger and cooperation between the two countries was bound to yield more fruits.


Foreign Minister Mudenge said that the "One China" Policy was a cornerstone in the relations between Zimbabwe and the People's Republic of China. Zimbabwe was opposed to the interference in the internal affairs of China by any country. He was greatly honored to be there to see with his own eyes the return of Hong Kong and Macao to China. These two historic events showed how wise China was in adopting the policy of "one country, two systems".


Foreign Minister Tang gave positive appraisal to the positive role that Zimbabwe had played in regional and international affairs. He and his counterpart exchanged views on international affairs. He indicated that the developing countries were facing two formidable challenges: one was that hegemony and power politics gained new development as a result of which the independence, sovereignty and development of many developing countries were compromised; the second was that while economic globalization brought in its wake opportunities to the developing countries, it also had some damaging repercussions. What kind of international political and economic new order should be created in the 21st century was an important topic facing each and every developing country. China all along maintained that an international political and economic new order should be established on the basis of Five Principles of Peaceful Co-existence and other established norms governing international relations.


President Mugabe, while meeting with Foreign Minister Tang, said he shared Tang's analysis and views about the international situations. He emphasized that Zimbabwe and China held similar views about international questions. He went on to say that it was hypocritical for some countries to preach democracy and human rights, for they had never uttered a word of democracy and human rights while enslaving and subjugating the African countries. There existed many unreasonable phenomena in the international arena and Africa was still plagued by strife and conflicts for various reasons.


Zimbabwe was the third leg of Foreign Minister Tang's African tour. On January 15, he left for Mozambique for a visit as a special envoy of President Jiang Zemin and would take part in the inauguration ceremony of President Chissano.