Chinese President Hu Jintao participated in the 16th APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting in Lima, Capital of Peru, and paid a state visit to Costa Rica, Cuba, Peru and Greece on November 17-26, 2008, after attending the G20 Summit on Financial Markets and the World Economy in Washington, DC. Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi who participated in the above activities introduced the outcome of the visit to the accompanying journalists on their way back to China.

President Hu paid the visit against the backdrop of deteriorating international financial situation and at the moment when China's relations with Latin America and Greece enter into a new development stage. The visit is of great importance to strengthening the cooperation of international community to cope with the financial crisis and pushing forward China's relations with Latin America and Greece, said Yang. During the visit, President Hu attended over 70 activities, met with national leaders as well as people of all walks of life extensively and signed more than 30 cooperation agreements with countries concerned. The governments and people of the countries President Hu visited received him with the highest regard and warmest hospitality. The international and local media closely followed and positively covered the visit. With a busy schedule, President Hu's visit has achieved fruitful outcome.

I. Pushing forward the international cooperation to cope with the financial crisis

President Hu stressed during the APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting that the international community should enhance confidence, intensify coordination, strengthen cooperation and make concerted efforts in order to effectively address financial risks, maintain international financial stability and promote the development of world economy. He proposed that countries intensify coordination of their macroeconomic policies and adopt all the financial and monetary measures necessary to curb the spread of the crisis and avoid a global economic recession; be committed to building a new international financial order that is fair, just, inclusive and orderly and make comprehensive, balanced, incremental and result-oriented reform of the international financial system so as to foster an institutional environment conducive to the sound global economic development; take tangible actions to change the unsustainable economic growth pattern and solve the fundamental issues of economic growth; support the developing countries which are influenced by the crisis and help them maintain their development momentum. Those proposals were admired and recognized widely by leaders present at the meeting. The international media spoke highly of the Chinese Government's policy measures of expanding domestic demand and stimulating economic growth and active contributions to handling the international financial crisis.

II. Promoting the pragmatic cooperation and stable development of APEC

President Hu put forward five points of view on the global issues of common concern at the APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting: consolidating consensus to boost the healthy development of multilateral trade mechanism; shouldering responsibilities to jointly cope with climate change; conducting exchanges and cooperation to fight natural disasters; standardizing and guiding enterprises' efforts of practicing corporate citizenship; making coordinated efforts to ensure world food and energy security. Concerning the future development of APEC, he suggested keeping the nature of APEC as an economic cooperation forum and its non-constrained cooperation model, making parallel efforts to promote economic and technological cooperation and trade and investment liberalization, with special focus on economic and technological cooperation and improving the capacity building of developing members. He also proposed a series of specific initiatives on addressing climate change, disaster prevention and reduction and promoting human resources development. He announced that the Chinese Government would provide special financial support for Asia-Pacific Network for Sustainable Forest Management and Rehabilitation and consider hosting the 2010 APEC ministerial meeting on human resources development. His initiatives and proposals were welcomed and well supported.

III. Deepening China's friendly and cooperative relations with Latin American countries and Greece

When visiting Latin America, President Hu exchanged in-depth opinions with national leaders of Costa Rica, Cuba and Peru on deepening bilateral relations and cooperation in various fields and contacted people from the local political, economic and media communities extensively. He reiterated that China is ready to make joint efforts with Latin American and Caribbean countries to build the all-round partnership featured by equality and mutual benefit and common development.

During President Hu's visit to Costa Rica, the two sides expressed satisfaction with the development of bilateral relations since the two countries established diplomatic ties over one year ago, pledged determination of increasing mutual trust and deepening cooperation, agreed to carry out pragmatic cooperation in such key fields as infrastructure construction, agriculture, telecommunications and energy and announced the launch of bilateral negotiations on the free trade agreement. When he visited Cuba, the two sides recognized that maintaining and developing their long-term friendship and cooperation complies with the current international situation and reflects the common desire of the communist parties, governments and people of the two countries. China and Cuba are determined to be good friends, comrades and brothers forever and will expand pragmatic cooperation on trade and investment and intensify exchanges in the fields of culture, education, health, sports and tourism. During Hu's visit to Peru, the two sides announced the successful completion of the bilateral negotiations on free trade agreement and the establishment of bilateral strategic partnership. They agreed to set trade, mining investment, infrastructure construction, high technology and poverty alleviation as the priority areas of bilateral cooperation in the future.