Snow-capped Kilimanjaro is Africa's tallest mountain and is located in northeastern Tanzania. 

Tanzania's ambassador to China, H.E. Omar R. Mapuri, believes the two nations have a surprising amount in common.

"Our two countries have over all these changing times pursued similar socio-economic policies and followed similar paths to development, albeit at slightly different tones and paces," he writes on the embassy's website. "Tanzania's policy of Ujamaa and Self Reliance - a brand of African socialism tailored to suit the realities of Tanzania - is for intent and purpose similar to the Chinese policy of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics. Tanzania's economic liberalization policy is akin to the Chinese opening up policy."

The countries have enjoyed a close relationship since former Chairman Mao Zedong "got behind the plight of the oppressed African" during the continent's decolonization, Mapuri says.

China is the only Asian country that recognized the 1964 Zanzibar Revolution, in which the United Republic of Tanzania was established through the union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar, shortly after the states won independence.

And in the 1970s, China took over construction of the Tanzania-Zambia Railway when developed countries shunned the project.

But it's within the last few years that the countries have upped the ante on their friendship. Bilateral trade surged by nearly 70 percent in 2005 to $470 million. During this time, the country's exports to China increased by 150 percent to about $170 million, while its imports from China increased 40.6 percent to $300 million.

The Forum on China-Africa Cooperation created a framework in which China's Preferential Tariff Agreement led to the tripling of Tanzania's exports of cotton, gold and sisal to the country.

Today, the two countries are jointly building the $56.4 million National Stadium, according to Olympic standards, in Tanzania's capital, Dar es Salaam.

The Tanzanian government has declared relations with China to be of utmost importance to national development. Today, the country is among the world's poorest, with per capita GDP at $800 (PPP), but it has picked up the pace of development to reach 6 percent real GDP growth in 2006.

More than 80 percent of the population lives in rural areas and work in the agricultural sector, which accounts for nearly half of the GDP. However, topographic and climate conditions have rendered all but 4 percent of the land area - the greatest in East Africa - arable.

Today, the government is jointly run by the Union Government and the Zanzibar Revolutionary Government, and led by President Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete.

The 120 tribes - of which five have more than 1 million people - that make up the country's 39.38 million residents live in a country famous for its terrain and ecosystems. Even the most geographically inept have heard of Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa's tallest snow-capped mountain, Lake Victoria, the world's second-largest freshwater lake, Lake Tanganyika, the world's second deepest lake, the Great Rift Valley and the beaches of Zanzibar.

The country's 15 national parks, which the national government claims contains the largest concentration of wild animals on the continent, have long been an attraction for safari seekers - especially the renowned Serengeti, which spills across the border into Kenya.

(China Daily January 18, 2008)