On May 11, 2016, Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani of Qatar met with visiting Foreign Minister Wang Yi at Emir's Palace in Doha.
Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani asked Wang Yi to convey his regards to President Xi Jinping. Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani expressed that his visit to China two years ago was a great success, which has promoted a great and positive leap forward of Qatar-China relations. With extensive cooperation areas, bilateral relations have achieved leapfrog development. Qatar attaches attention to developing its relations with China, and will continue to support China's stance on safeguarding national sovereignty and other issues. Qatar hopes to further strengthen practical cooperation with China in all areas, including elevating energy cooperation to a strategic level. The Qatari side supports the "Belt and Road" initiative proposed by China, and believes the initiative will be well implemented, in which Qatar is willing to actively participate and step up cooperation with China.
Wang Yi conveyed greetings from President Xi Jinping to Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. Wang Yi noted that Your Highness paid a successful visit to China in 2014 and reached important consensus with President Xi Jinping on establishing a strategic partnership. China regards Qatar as an important cooperative partner in jointly building the Belt and Road, and holds that the alignment of China's "Belt and Road" initiative and the "Qatar National Vision 2030" will open up broad prospect for bilateral practical cooperation. China stands ready to advance cooperation with Qatar in such areas as infrastructure, energy, production capacity and finance under the framework of the "Belt and Road" initiative, and assist Qatar to improve its self-development capacity and industrialization level. The Chinese side is willing to boost coordination and cooperation with Qatar on regional hotspot issues of common concern so as to give play to respective roles in the political settlement of the Middle East issue.
Wang Yi said that my attendance at the 7th ministerial meeting of the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum mainly aims at carrying out important measures proposed by President Xi Jinping during his visit to the League of Arab States (LAS) at the beginning of this year. We appreciate Qatar's enormous efforts in hosting the forum, and hope to conduct close cooperation with Qatar to ensure the success of the forum so as to send a positive message that China and Arab states will enhance collective cooperation and jointly promote world peace and development.
Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani noted that President Xi Jinping's visit to the LAS this January fully demonstrates China's trust and support to Arab states and people. Arab states appreciate China's consistent, positive and fair policy on the Middle East issue, and consider China the most sincere friend of the Arab people. Arab states will seize opportunities, join the hands of friendship with China and further strengthen Arab-China cooperation.