An official of the Chinese Ministry’s West Asia and North Africa Department underlined the importance of the ministerial meeting of the China-Arab Cooperation Forum, which is currently hosted by Beijing. The official told reporters at the Chinese foreign ministry on Monday that the Forum’s eighth session would further support and strengthen the Chinese-Arab relations through new resolutions and MoUs. On the aspects that would be emphasized during the meeting, he said: “the meeting will address various aspects in issues of mutual interest, including the mechanism of building the Belt and Road project and joint collective action between the two sides.” The official said that the meetings of the China-Arab Forum since its establishment in 2004, have effective and important results, as each meeting comes out with additions to previous meetings. Citing recent statistics, the official said that the volume of trade between China and the Arab world has reached $200 billion in 2017, stressing that those numbers indicated the clear progress achieved by the two sides and the efforts to deepen mutual relations in the coming period. Meanwhile, in remarks to Asharq Al-Awsat, the director of media and foreign relations at the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said that the Arab-China Forum was working on several aspects of cooperation. “Various mechanisms have been introduced to accelerate relations and make them work and operate more efficiently,” the official said. He noted in this regard that the forum has established committees of senior officials who work on political issues and joint cooperation, in addition to specialized committees for cooperation on energy, business, culture and the media sector. “Our statistics show that there are 150 passenger flights and 45 cargo flights between China and the Arab countries every week. Therefore, China and the Arab countries form continuous and beneficial partners, and the expansion of communication between the Arab and Chinese peoples would be reflected in the fields of science, education, culture, health, media and other sectors,” the Chinese official added.