Germany helping with sport goals

Chinese Vice-Premier Liu Yandong called on China and Germany to build a stable and sustainable strategic cooperative soccer partnership on Saturday.

She was attending the first China-Germany Football Development Symposium at the German Bundesliga football club FC Cologne.

Liu underlined in her speech that, by the year of 2020, the number of soccer pitches in China will increase to more than 70,000. Also by that year, 50,000 trainers will have been cultivated to support soccer in schools, and 20,000 specialized training schools will have been established.

Regarding the further development of soccer cooperation between the two countries, Liu called for the strengthening of exchanges between the national teams of China and Germany, as well as between their professional soccer clubs, jointly expanded win-win cooperation within the industry, and an improvement of the bilateral exchange mechanism for youth training.

German soccer coaches are also expected to take up new jobs to train Chinese students. China's Ministry of Education and the German Football Association on Friday signed an agreement to team up on soccer training in schools, which will give German coaches more opportunities to share their experience with young Chinese players.

China expects the agreement will improve the populous country's level of soccer participation in schools and, gradually, its performance internationally.

Liu, who attended the signing ceremony at the German Chancellery building in Berlin, said soccer cooperation was a new front for Sino-German cooperation, an area in which Germany has tremendous experience to share.

Chinese leaders attach great importance to sports and have explicitly urged the revitalization of sports in China, something that is wanted by hundreds of millions of Chinese fans, said Liu.

The structural reform of football in China has made substantive progress, with school soccer now being vigorously developed, she added.

Xinhua and Fu Jing contributed to this story.