The celebration of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, which wraps up on Wednesday at the Chinese Embassy in Kigali, has enjoyed turnout of different personalities with a new commitment to promote a broad range of culture projects that would strengthen the mutual exchange and culture biodiversity between the two countries.

This new move in bilateral cooperation between Rwanda and China cooperation is dedicated mainly to promote the mutual exchange of knowledge and culture through different activities such as ballet, folk dances, handcrafts, teaching Chinese language, and visual arts.

"Despite a long distance separating the two countries, the culture is nowadays considered as one of the key elements that should enable to break down some barriers which are confronting people of the two countries," Joseph Habineza Rwandan minister of sports and culture told Xinhua during an interview.

The Rwandan official insisted that there is need nowadays for the two countries to explore new ways of developing new concepts to boost culture in order to enable mutual exchanges between China and Rwanda.

"The culture exchange between Rwanda and China is an opportunity to popularise the diversity of our civilizations and promote artistic heritage of the two countries," he said.

This culture diversity could challenges people of the two countries to look for different answers to a single problem, by stimulating different points of view and ways of thinking, Minister Habineza furthermore said.

For example, through this bilateral cooperation with China, this small central African state is exploring ways of mobilizing its artisans to use bamboos weaves and straws in making little craft and produce all kinds of products such as chairs and tables of various styles.

"Creativity is important in making products from bamboos weaves, and no doubt that ours artisans benefit this knowledge from their Chinese counterparts, the move will play an important role in the economy and in people's lives," Gerarl Sina, one of Rwandan business operator, told Xinhua.

However, despite the Rwanda Private Sector Federation efforts through mobilizing local artisans to benefit from this Chinese handcraft knowledge, most of products produced from bamboos weaves are distributed locally especially in the hotels and other tourists sites.

"The main objective of this bamboos weaves would be to mobilize Rwandan artisans to learn more about this economically handcraft knowledge while preserving their cultures through the production of traditional crafts," Gerald Sina told Xinhua.

In order to increase competitiveness of those job losers, one higher-learning institute in Kigali introduced recently the first-ever Chinese language class which saw its first batch of 35 graduates.

During the colorful event attended by several Rwandan officials and diplomats, a group of graduates at this Chinese training center known as "Confucius Institute" were describing their experiences, through speaking Chinese, while a choir of young artists were performing and singing in Chinese.

(Xinhua News Agency September 17, 2009)