Negroponte marks Sino-U.S. anniversary

BEIJING, Jan. 7 (UPI) -- U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte was welcomed to China Wednesday as the two countries celebrated 30 years of diplomacy, officials said.

Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, greeting Negroponte to mark the 1979 establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries, said he hoped the next 30 years will prove even more beneficial, Xinhua, the state-run Chinese news agency, reported.

"The Sino-U.S. relations, although they have experienced twists and turns in the past, on the whole have moved forward," Yang said.

Echoing the theme, Negroponte concurred that the U.S. relationship with China had grown "enormously," reaching a level that "could not have been imagined 30 years ago," Xinhua said.

The remarks came after Negroponte and his Chinese counterparts attended a table tennis game between Chinese and U.S. athletes, commemorating the historic "ping pong diplomacy" that helped produce a detente between China and the United States in the early 1970s.