Xiangyang Daily (Hu Caidie, the Journalist, and Liu Jing and Zhang Yandi, the Correspondents) On the afternoon of March 3, Xiangyang in Hubei Province and Pinsk City, Belarus, co-hosted an online signing ceremony to forge a sister-city relationship. Du Haiyang, Deputy Secretary of the CPC Xiangyang Municipal Committee and Mayor of the Xiangyang Municipal People’s Government, and Valery Rebkovets, Chairman of the Pinsk City Executive Committee, jointly signed the “Agreement on the Establishment of Sister City Relations between Xiangyang City of Hubei Province, the People’s Republic of China and Pinsk City of Brest Oblast, the Republic of Belarus.”

Pinsk City is situated on the banks of the Pripyat River in the southwestern part of Brest Oblast. It serves as one of Belarus’s key economic and cultural centers in the southwest and functions as a vital transportation and logistics hub linking Eastern and Western Europe. Pinsk City’s industrial profile—centered on textiles, machinery manufacturing, and wood processing—exhibits distinctive strengths and strong complementarity with Xiangyang’s industrial structure, offering substantial potential for mutually beneficial cooperation. Over the years, the two cities have conducted a series of high-level economic and trade dialogues, delegation exchanges, and friendly visits, deepening mutual understanding, reinforcing trust, and consolidating bilateral friendship. Both sides have reached a broad consensus on seizing shared opportunities and advancing common development.

The successful online signing ceremony between the two sides serves as a vivid demonstration of the all-weather, comprehensive strategic partnership between China and Belarus. Both sides affirmed their commitment to taking the important consensus reached by the two heads of state as the fundamental guiding principle; establishing sister-city relations as a new milestone; and upholding the principle of “complementary strengths, mutual benefit, and win-win cooperation.” They pledged to deepen multi-level, multi-format exchanges, cooperation, and friendly interactions across a broad range of fields—including economy and trade, education, science, and technology—continuously strengthen experience sharing and mutual learning, enhance people-to-people ties, and deliver tangible benefits to the peoples of both countries.

Meng Yanqing, a city-level leader of Xiangyang, attended the signing ceremony.