Director-General meets China’s Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs

22 November 2019, Beijing –FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu met with Le Yucheng, China’s Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, on Friday during a visit to the Chinese capital.

The Vice Minister congratulated the Director-General for his ambitious start at FAO and noted that China attaches great importance to agriculture, rural affairs and farmers.

As a large developing country, China is willing to continue to work closely with FAO and hopes that FAO will continue to support China’s own agricultural development, Le added.

The Director-General reviewed FAO’s history and mandate and briefed his counterparty on core functions such as providing data and information, facilitating policy dialogue, supporting normative work, and bringing science-based knowledge to the field.

He also noted that FAO was one of the first international organizations to support China’s Belt and Road Initiative, a Chinese-led effort to boost regional and intercontinental connectivity with significant infrastructure investments.
FAO itself has now launched the Hand-in-Hand Initiative as the main platform for harnessing resources, technologies and experiences to the development needs of Small Island Developing States, Land-Locked Developing Countries and Least-Developed Countries through targeted work on optimizing production, supply and value chains as well as other aspects.
The Director-General also exchanged views with the Vice Minister on several important international conferences that FAO is organizing.