China work with Kazakhstan on enriching co-op with $14b

Kazakh leaders echoed Li's ideas, with Nazarbayev vowing Kazakhstan's support for the China-proposed initiatives of the construction of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, and Masimov's promise of his country's active participation in helping build the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, as well as strengthened coordination within the framework of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) with China.

The two sides further detailed their cooperation ambitions with a joint communique issued after the meeting between Li and Masimov.

According to the document, the two sides agreed to deepen collaboration in the area of confidence-building measures, to allow CICA, or the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia, to play a greater role in the future.

The two countries will work with other CICA members to intensify cooperation in related areas and improve the mechanism of this inter-governmental forum for dialogues on regional security issues in Asia.

Both countries are key members of CICA: the idea of CICA was first proposed by Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev in October 1992, while China assumes the chairmanship of CICA for the 2014-2016 period.

Also, the two sides would like to tap into the potential of hi-tech cooperation and further advance bilateral aerospace cooperation, read the communique.

The two countries agreed to jointly establish a technical cooperation center as both sides have huge cooperation potential in hi-tech field, innovation and transformation of scientific achievements.

They hoped that mainstream hi-tech organizations and enterprises from both sides would carry out exchanges and develop partnership with each other.

Meanwhile, in the communique, both sides decided to set up a joint working group to study bilateral cooperation mechanism and direction.

After his official visit to Kazakhstan, Premier Li will attend a prime ministers' meeting of the SCO in Astana on Monday.