Hon Dr. Zhang Ye, Chief Editor and President of Australian
Chinese Times
Hon Mark McGowan, MLA, Premier of WA,
Hon Mike Nahan, MLA, Leader of the Opposition,
Distinguished Guests, Ladies & Gentlemen,
Good Evening!
I am very pleased to attend the 20th anniversary celebration of Australian Chinese Times. Firstly, on behalf of the Consulate General of the People's Republic of China in Perth, I would like to extend our congratulations to Dr. Zhang Ye and his team, and appreciation to Australian Chinese Times for its contribution to promoting the people-to-people and cultural exchanges between China and Western Australia.
Over the past 20 years, Australian Chinese Times has become one of the most widely-read Chinese-language newspaper in WA by serving and increasing the engagement between the mainstream society and the Chinese communities. Besides reporting the news about WA, China and world, Australian Chinese Times holds many cultural and art activities, in an aim to deepen the understanding and exchanges between China and Australia. It opens a window for the Western Australia people to be better informed of China's excellent traditional culture, the economic growth and social development. Your hard working not only highlighted the history, depth and breadth of Chinese culture but also promoted WA's economic prosperity, social harmony and cultural diversity.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of China's reform and opening up. Last week, at the 13th summit of the G20 in Buenos Aires, Chinese President Xi Jinping pointed out that, "China, as a beneficiary of reform and opening-up, will continue to push a new round of reform and economic opening-up, deepen market reform, protect intellectual property rights, encourage fair competition, and increase imports". President Xi's speech showed China's commitment to comprehensive and deeper reforms, greater openness, economic globalization and a community with a shared future for mankind.
China and Australia have been important partners to each other. Although the development of our bilateral relations has not been always smooth, sometimes there be clouds, even wind and rain, huge progress has been made in exchanges and cooperation in various areas between our two countries since the diplomatic ties was established in 1972. These progresses have delivered real benefits to our peoples. And moreover, China-Western Australia relations have maintained the good momentum of growth and borne fruitful results with booming pragmatic cooperation in many sectors.
In order to achieve sustained and sound development in our bilateral relations, we need to have more interactions and inclusiveness, with less bias and bigotry, we need to build more mutual trust, with less misunderstanding, and we need to develop more connections between our two countries and two peoples, with less barriers. In this process, the news media can play a big role. I hope that Australian Chinese Times will continue to report on China's development and changes in a comprehensive, objective and in-depth manner, so as to show a real developing China to Western Australia and promote the relations between our two countries to move forward along the right track.
I hope and believe that Australian Chinese Times would never forget why they started and would forge ahead to further integrate into the local mainstream society and continually contribute to the steady and sound development of China-Australia relations.
I am confident that Australian Chinese Times will evolve with the times,and will have an ever brighter future in the coming years. Let me conclude by congratulating Australian Chinese Times once again on its achievements over the last 20 years. Wish Australian Chinese Times every success!
Thank you!