On March 29, 2016 local time, President Xi Jinping met with Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka of the Czech Republic in Prague.

Xi Jinping pointed out that China and the Czech Republic have traditional friendship. In recent years, the two sides have enjoyed close high-level exchanges, enhanced strategic mutual trust, continuously expanded economic and trade cooperation, and enriched people-to-people and cultural exchanges. During my visit this time, both sides agreed to raise the China-Czech relations to the level of strategic partnership, opening a new era for China-Czech relations.

Xi Jinping stressed that both sides should take the memorandum of understanding on jointly promoting the construction of the "Belt and Road" initiative signed by the two governments last year as an opportunity to strengthen the docking of each other's development strategies and identify the key cooperation areas and programs. China is willing to, together with the Czech side, advance the air connectivity steadily and discuss to conduct cooperation in infrastructure construction such as high-speed railways, roads and bridges.

Both sides should continue to strengthen cooperation in traditional fields including automobiles and machine tools while enhancing communication and cooperation in high-tech fields such as aviation, nanotechnology, biotechnology, and nuclear power. The Chinese government encourages and supports competent Chinese enterprises to invest in the Czech Republic to expand bilateral financial cooperation, and also welcomes more Czech enterprises to explore the Chinese market. Both sides should strengthen cooperation in culture, education, sports, tourism, health care, film and television and other areas, and promote local exchanges, so as to inject more impetus into people-to-people and cultural exchanges between China and the Czech Republic.

Xi Jinping pointed out that the mechanism of cooperation between China and the Central and Eastern European countries (CEEC) has gradually entered the stage of maturity with early harvest. It is hoped that all the 17 countries can jointly uphold the spirit of mutual respect and mutual assistance, mutual benefit and win-win results, openness and inclusiveness, to realize the docking between China-CEEC cooperation and the construction of the "Belt and Road" as well as the development of China-EU relations, making contributions to regional and world development. China is willing to, within the framework of the joint building of the "Belt and Road", boost connectivity between China and the CEEC and deepen cooperation in various fields such as education, tourism and sports.

Bohuslav Sobotka expressed warm welcome to President Xi Jinping for his historic state visit to the Czech Republic. Czech-China cooperation in various fields such as economy and trade, aviation, finance, energy, and medicine has greatly benefited the two peoples. The Czech side is looking forward to planning the further bilateral cooperation in combination with the construction of the "Belt and Road", and is ready to become an important force for the development of the EU-China relations and a center for transportation, logistics and finance along the Silk Road Economic Belt in Europe. The Czech Republic speaks highly of and will actively promote the CEEC-China cooperation, and is willing to play an important role in fields such as health care, investment, and local cooperation.

Wang Huning, Li Zhanshu, Yang Jiechi and others attended the meeting.