The people of China waited with bated breath as the new leaders of the country's ruling party were announced on November 15, one day after the conclusion of the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), and listened closely to the blueprints for China's future development and diplomatic policies revealed at the congress.

In terms of foreign policy, 17th CPC Central Committee General Secretary Hu Jintao stressed in his report to the 18th CPC National Congress that China will increase unity and cooperation with other developing countries. "China will remain a reliable friend and sincere partner of other developing countries," he said.

Home to the world largest number of developing countries, Africa undoubtedly will continue to be a key continent for China to maintain foreign relations and develop cooperation. China has already begun this effort. In July, Hu announced new measures China will take in Sino-African cooperation in the coming three years at the Fifth Ministerial Conference of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) held in Beijing. In comparison, these new measures focus more on the sectors closely related to people's livelihood, such as the well-being of African people, employment and cross-border and cross-regional infrastructure construction.

People's well-being and employment in Africa

"People's well-being" and "employment" were two key phrases at the Fifth FOCAC Ministerial Conference. At the opening ceremony of the forum, Hu stressed that China will continue to increase assistance to Africa in order to aid development in Africa. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao expressed similar intentions at the opening ceremony of the Conference of the Chinese and African Entrepreneurs when he said that the future Sino-African economic and trade cooperation will focus more on improving people's livelihood and employment.

This has long been the focus of China's cooperation with Africa. In the past three years, China's aid to Africa nearly doubled and the aid mainly went to improving people's livelihood, alleviating poverty, preventing disaster and providing relief and capacity building. For instance, China has built schools, hospitals, bridges and water supply projects. China has also sent a large number of agricultural technicians and experts and medical teams to African countries.

Cross-border and cross-regional infrastructure construction

At the Fifth FOCAC Ministerial Conference, China pledged $20 billion to African countries in the coming three years, doubling the amount offered at the previous meeting in 2009. This, undoubtedly, is good news for enterprises that plan to start and expand businesses in Africa as they can get more investment and financial support to expand in sectors such as infrastructure construction, agriculture, manufacturing and SME development.

Cross-border and cross-regional infrastructure construction has greatly changed the previous practices of Chinese enterprises that focused on infrastructure construction only within each country. After the change, China can give greater play to its competitive advantages in infrastructure construction on a greater platform, and can help promote African integration by constructing infrastructure networks linking various countries and regions. It is expected that the transportation network from Cairo in Egypt to Cape Town in South Africa, a failed plan conceived in the 19th century by Western colonists, will come to fruition in the era of Sino-African cooperation in the 21st century.

Non-governmental cooperation

Hu's also pointed out that China will take solid steps to promote public diplomacy, people-to-people diplomacy and cultural diplomacy. With the expansion of Sino-African relations in the past decade, China's relations with African countries have received attention from Western countries. Some Western politicians, media and NGOs that think China has moved their cheese by trying to take advantage of Africa have scrutinized every single action of the Chinese Government, enterprises and even individual businesses, trying to find every possible flaw of Chinese people in Africa. This scrutiny makes it necessary for China to strengthen people-to-people contact between China and African countries.

In November 2010, I had the honor of listening to Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping's remarks at the opening ceremony of the seminar marking the 10th anniversary of the establishment of the FOCAC in South Africa. I was deeply impressed when he pointed out that the essence of Sino-African cooperation lies in equal treatment and mutual benefit in order to make it a win-win situation. He also called for both China and Africa to continue to promote the new type of strategic partnership in a substantial way. I believe that the new generation of Chinese leaders after the 18th CPC National Congress will continue to promote Sino-African relations in the direction of sustainable development.

(The author is the director of the African Studies of the Institute of West Asian and African Studies of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)