At the invitation of the Department of Defense of Australia, Xu Caihou, vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, arrived in Sydney on September 10 for an official friendly visit to Australia.

　　In his written speech distributed at the airport, Xu Caihou said that the Sino-Australian relations had developed smoothly in the past few years, and the two sides were now working together to develop a relationship of all-round cooperation for mutual benefit and win-win outcome in the 21st century on the basis of the principles of mutual respect, trust, equality and mutual benefit, and common development.

　　He also noted that the Chinese Government and army attached great importance to developing friendly cooperative relations with Australia and its armed forces, and indicated that his current visit was aimed at increasing mutual understanding, expanding mutual consensus, developing mutual friendship and enhancing mutual cooperation between the two sides and pushing for sound and deep-going development of the relations between the two countries and the two militaries.

　　Xu Caihou's party, including Liu Yuan, political commissar of the Chinese Academy of Military Science, Sun Jianguo, chief of staff of the PLA Navy and, Sun Sijing, deputy political commissar of the General Logistics Department of the PLA, arrived in Sydney by the same flight.

　　By Mi Ligong

　　(Sept 11, PLA Daily)