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BEIJING, Jan. 18-- Chinese President Xi Jinping exchanged congratulatory messages with Vietnamese President Nguyen Phu Trong on Saturday to celebrate the 70th anniversary of diplomatic ties. China and Vietnam are socialist neighbors linked by mountains and rivers, and are a community of a shared future with strategic significance, said Xi, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee. Since the establishment of diplomatic ties 70 years ago, Xi said, the traditional friendship forged and cultivated by older generations of leaders of both sides has blossomed and yielded fruits, and has achieved substantial growth under the principles of "long-term stability, future orientation, good-neighborly friendship and all-round cooperation," and in the spirit of "good neighbor, good friend, good comrade and good partner." Xi said he and Trong have exchanged visits twice, which is uNPRecedented in the history of the two countries' interactions. During these visits, they have reached important consensuses on consolidating good neighborliness and friendliness and deepening mutually beneficial cooperation so as to jointly usher in a new era for the relationship between the two countries and between the CPC and the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV). Noting that the world is undergoing profound changes unseen in a century, the Chinese president said China-Vietnam relations have also entered a critical period that builds on the past and prepares for the future. | 
