ACC Secretary-General Exchanged Views with Director of SEAMEO

On 6 November 2016, Secretary-General of ASEAN-China Center (ACC), H.E. Mme. Yang Xiuping met with Dr. Gatot, Director of the Secretariat of Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization (SEAMEO) in Wuxi and exchanged views on strengthening bilateral cooperation.

Secretary-General Yang introduced the series of activities held by the two sides throughout the year to celebrate the 25th anniversary of ASEAN-China dialogue relations. She mentioned ACC had achieved fruitful results in promoting bilateral practical cooperation in trade, investment, education, culture, tourism, and other fields, for instance, information and media. Recently, ACC had just successfully held a reception celebrating the 5th anniversary of its establishment and comprehensively reviewed the development since its inception.  Up to present, the ACC had completed more than 100 flagship projects, organized and participated in more than 500 activities. She cited SEAMEO, as an influential institution for regional education cooperation, had unique advantage in promoting ASEAN-China education cooperation, strengthening personnel exchanges, and promoting regional education development. SEAMEO was considered an important partner to the ACC.  Year 2017 would be the 50th anniversary of the establishment of ASEAN. Thus, ACC would like to take this opportunity to continue to strengthen communication with the SEAMEO Secretariat, explore new ways of cooperation, and jointly promote ASEAN-China education cooperation to a new height for the sake of economic and social development, as well as making greater contributions for the benefit of the people from both sides.

Dr. Gatot congratulated to the ACC for its 5th anniversary and said it had made positive contributions for promoting ASEAN-China practical cooperation in various fields, especially in the field of education cooperation. He said that SEAMEO had established a good relationship with Fujian, Yunnan, Guizhou, and Jiangsu provinces.  Thanks to the support of ACC, more than 400 institutions had signed MoUs for cooperation between both sides. The Secretariat would continue to play an active role in building bridges between ASEAN and China to promote the development of education exchanges and cooperation. The year 2017 was designated as the Year of ASEAN-China Tourism Cooperation. The Secretariat would like to take this opportunity to have closer communication with ACC, and to jointly carry out tourism vocational training programmes among others to make new contributions to the bilateral education exchange and cooperation.