BELLINZONA, Switzerland, Oct. 11 (Xinhua) -- China welcomes more Swiss friends to become "new-era Walter Bosshards," Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said here Friday.
Wang, also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, made the remarks at a reception hosted by Swiss Federal Councillor and Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis in Bellinzona, where he held exchanges with local officials.
Wang recalled that in the 1930s, Swiss journalist Walter Bosshard undertook an arduous journey to China, becoming the first European journalist to visit Yan'an, the CPC's wartime headquarters and key revolutionary base in Shaanxi, and interview Chairman Mao Zedong.
At a time when there were many false reports about the CPC in the international community, Bosshard, drawing on his first-hand experience in Yan'an, wrote that China's hope lay in Yan'an, as the CPC represented a union of discipline and ideals, Wang said.
Wang said China is a country with a long history and one that is constantly developing and transforming. If any country in the world has undergone the greatest transformation and achieved the fastest growth, it would be China, he said.
He noted that China has lifted 800 million people out of poverty, fostered a middle-income group of nearly 500 million, and that its 1.4 billion people are advancing together toward modernization -- a process that contains enormous opportunities for cooperation.
China welcomes more Swiss friends to be "new-era Walter Bosshards" -- people who visit the country to embrace cooperation, the future, and opportunity, Wang said.
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