China, EU target annual students interflow at 300,000 by 2020

BEIJING -- China and the European Union (EU) will strive to expand the interflow of students between the two sides to 300,000 person times per year by 2020, a paper said on Wednesday.

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China issued a policy paper on Wednesday to define its policy objectives towards the EU and blueprint comprehensive bilateral cooperation in the next 5 to 10 years.

Entitled "China's Policy Paper on the EU: Deepen the China-EU Comprehensive Strategic Partnership for Mutual Benefit and Win-win Cooperation," the paper is the second China's policy paper on the EU, with the first one issued by the Chinese government in November 2003.

The paper eyed expanding China-EU consular cooperation to facilitate the personnel interflow between the two sides. China hopes that the EU could take credible steps to protect the safety and lawful rights and interests of Chinese citizens in Europe, and make it easier for Chinese nationals to travel to Europe by, among other things, streamlining visa, immigration and residence procedures. On tourism, both sides will push for the establishment of China-EU tourism cooperation mechanism, further explore each other's tourism market, maintain exchanges of tourism policies and statistics, and work for the early signing of the Memorandum of Understanding on Bilateral Tourism Cooperation, the paper said.

The relevant EU member states are urged to speed up the adoption of the Chinese language as an official language of the World Tourism Organization, it said.

Social service sectors for China and the EU to work on include old-age care, services for the children and people with disabilities, as well as charity and social assistance, according to the paper.

China supports EU companies and member states to invest in old-age service industry in China, it noted.

Both sides should strengthen communication on the technologies for the prevention and control of infectious diseases, and cooperate on laboratory testing, diagnosis and treatment, as well as vaccine development, the paper said.

China and the EU seek to explore judicial cooperation in anti-corruption, combating organized transnational crimes, extradition, transfer of sentenced persons and criminal assets recovery, and promote experience sharing on legal supervision, it said.

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