Since the outbreak of the international financial crisis, China, while endeavoring to maintain steady and relatively fast growth of its own economy, has been actively involved in the international cooperation to tackle the crisis. We have put forward many important proposals, which were highly acclaimed by the international community. Through these efforts, we have not only gained an enabling external environment for meeting our central task of ensuring growth, people's well-being and social stability at home, but also boosted the confidence of the international community to overcome the crisis and contributed significantly to promoting world economic recovery and international financial stability.
Over the past 60 years, China's diplomacy has played an important part in upholding the country's sovereignty, security and development interests and in promoting world peace, development and cooperation. We have worked closely with other countries to address various international disputes with a responsible manner. We have vigorously conducted economic, cultural and public diplomacy and achieved fruitful results. The number of countries having diplomatic relations with us has increased from 18 in the early days of the People's Republic to 171 today.
China has entered into new types of cooperative relations or constructive partnerships with the world's major countries. China and Russia have established a strategic partnership of coordination and relations between the two countries have enjoyed sustained, sound and steady progress at a very high level. It is the common aspiration of both the Chinese and Russian people to build stronger relations between the two countries. Sino-US relations have reached an unprecedented level in terms of both depth and breadth over the past 30 years since the establishment of diplomatic ties. The two countries have agreed to build a positive, cooperative and comprehensive relationship for the 21st century and have put in place the China-US Strategic and Economic Dialogues mechanism. The growth of China-US relations serves the fundamental interests of the two peoples and is conducive to peace, stability and development in the Asia Pacific and beyond. We have established a comprehensive strategic partnership with the EU and a strategic relationship of mutual benefit with Japan. We have been actively engaged in the "BRIC" dialogue and the dialogue among the "five developing countries" and enjoyed ever stronger cooperation with the major emerging economies.
Since the founding of the People's Republic, we have given top priority to fostering good relations with neighboring countries in our overall diplomacy. Though our specific policies toward these countries may have featured differently at different times, the fundamental policy of building good-neighborly relations has never unchanged. We have been committed to building a harmonious surrounding environment featuring durable peace and common prosperity. Since the beginning of the new century, we have been pursuing the policy of building amicable relations and partnerships with our neighbors. We have jointly established the Shanghai Cooperation Organization with Russia and central Asian countries, carried out dialogue with ASEAN and participated in the dialogue between ASEAN and China, Japan and ROK. Our trade and economic links with neighboring countries are growing closer. China is now the largest trading partner of Japan, ROK, India, Vietnam and Mongolia.
