Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah El Sisi headed on Thursday morning to China to attend the opening ceremony of the 24th Winter Olympics, which will start in the Chinese capital of Beijing, today.
The president’s participation in this huge global sporting event came at the invitation of Chinese President Xi Jinping in light of the close and strategic relations between Egypt and China.
The president’s visit also includes a summit meeting with Chinese President Xi where the two leaders will discuss ways to enhance bilateral relations, which have witnessed a qualitative leap in recent years at all levels.
This comes in a manner that would achieve the common interests of the two countries and peoples as well as continuing consultations and mutual coordination on a number of regional and international files of common interest.
The 2022 Olympics – the first-ever Winter Olympics to be held in China and its second Olympics in total after hosting the 2008 games – is scheduled to last until February 20 under strict coronavirus measures.
More than 2,900 athletes from 92 countries will be participating in the games, according to the figures available on the official Olympics website.
Athletes will compete in 109 medal events across 15 sports, which are alpine skiing, bobsledding, biathlon, luge, skeleton, ice hockey, figure skating, speed skating, short track speed skating, curling, freestyle skiing, snowboarding, cross-country skiing, ski jumping, and Nordic.
On January 24, Egypt celebrated the incoming Beijing Winter Olympics by lighting up the historic Cairo Tower with the slogans ‘Beijing 2022’ and ‘See you in Beijing’ in Arabic, English and Chinese, in the attendance of Chinese Ambassador to Egypt Liao Liqiang.
The Cairo Tower also played the official song of the Beijing Winter Olympics ‘Together for a shared future’.
In the meantime, Egypt and China marked last year the 65th anniversary of the establishment of Egyptian-Chinese diplomatic ties.
Egypt was the first African and Arab state to establish diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China.
In July, President Sisi vowed in a message to the Chinese president on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China (CPC) to push Egyptian-Chinese ties towards “broader” prospects.
The Egyptian president went on his first official visit to China in 2014 to elevate the relations between the two countries to a comprehensive strategic partnership, signing multiple deals for co-operation on economic, defence, and counterterrorism issues.
Xi also visited Egypt in 2016 to sign numerous investment and aid deals worth billions of dollars in major sectors, including electricity, transportation, and infrastructure.
Furthermore, Egypt was one of the first countries to join the Belt and Road Initiative, which was launched by the Chinese government in 2013 with the objective of investing in dozens of countries and international bodies.
Since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, Egypt has imported millions of doses of the Chinese Sinopharm and Sinovac vaccines.
Egypt has also started manufacturing the Sinovac vaccine after signing agreements with the Chinese company in April last year.
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