With more and more Chinese businesses and people going overseas, consular issues are playing an increasingly important role in China's foreign affairs.
Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi has urged some US politicians to rule out the mindset of viewing ties between the two countries as "a zero-sum game", saying it is "an outdated stereotyped notion".
The Beijing 2008 Olympic Games and the Shanghai 2010 Expo among other big events have pushed China into a more prominent position, and China is ready to assume due international obligations, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said.
China said it will make greater efforts to start Six-Party emergency consultations because tensions on the Korean Peninsula have not eased. China ready to assume world obligations
China Southern Airlines will begin flying to Guangzhou from Auckland three times a week from next April.
China and the US resumed their once-stalled defense consultations Thursday in Washington in a further sign of the thawing of a stalled military-to-military ties between the two countries after a massive arms sale plan was announced by the US to Taiwan earlier.
Chinese experts reiterated that conferring an award to convicted Chinese criminal Liu Xiaobo is "gross interference" in China's judicial system, one day before the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony.
Most nations support China's stance on the Nobel Peace Prize, and China will not yield to outside pressure on this issue, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said on Thursday.
Comment: Insult of the Nobel Peace Prize
Most nations support China's stance on the Nobel Peace Prize, the Foreign Ministry said on Thursday.
Comment: Insult of the Nobel Peace Prize
China on Thursday expressed its firm opposition to a US congressional resolution on convicted Chinese criminal Liu Xiaobo, winner of this year's Nobel Peace Prize, and urged US lawmakers to change "arrogant and rude" attitude. Not a noble way of involving China
Kim Jong Il, top leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), met with Chinese State Councilor Dai Bingguo here on Thursday.
A Chinese military delegation left Beijing Thursday morning for the United States to attend the 11th annual round of defense consultations, said China's Ministry of National Defense.