On February 14, 2006, Mexican President Fox met in Monterrey with Chinese State Councilor Chen Zhili who was there attending the opening ceremony of the Sixth E-9 Ministerial Review Meeting on Education for All of UNESCO.

President Fox said that both Mexico and China enjoy a long history and glorious culture. In recent years, the bilateral contacts get ever closer and exchanges and cooperation in such fields as economy and trade, education, science and technology increasingly expand. Mexico appreciates that China sets up the Confucius Institute in Mexico and is willing to help China offer Spanish language training. To broaden cultural and educational cooperation between Mexico and China will help consolidate the bilateral relations. Mexico expects to work with China to move the bilateral ties ahead steadily.

Chen noted that despite the long distance between China and Mexico the traditional friendship between the two countries and their people has maintained the vitality and achieved fruitful results over the past 34 years since the establishment of diplomatic ties between the two countries. Politically, the two sides enjoy frequent high-level exchange of visits and have established the strategic partnership, and the bilateral ties have entered the stage of comprehensive and mature development. Economically, China and Mexico are important trade partners. We expect to strengthen the mutually beneficial cooperation with Mexico in investment and other areas and realize common development. China and Mexico maintain sound cooperation in international affairs. In particular, the two countries share extensive consensus on the reform of the United Nations and collaborate with each other closely.

Chen said that to reinforce cooperation in the fields of education and science and technology between the two countries is a major component of the bilateral strategic partnership. Both China and Mexico are ancient civilizations and shoulder the huge task of education. Therefore the two sides can learn from each other in the fields of culture, education, science and technology. We are ready to make joint efforts with Mexico to strengthen personnel exchanges and promote the bilateral cooperation in the area of science and technology by taking measures such as establishing a regular exchange mechanism for heads of institutions of higher education, organizing higher education exhibitions and increasing scholarship quota.

On the same day, Chen also met with governor of the state of Nuevo León and governor of the state of Yucatan of Mexico respectively.