TIANJIN — State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi on July 27 held talks with visiting Mongolian Foreign Minister Batmunkh Battsetseg in North China's port city of Tianjin.

Wang said that since the outbreak of COVID-19, China and Mongolia have supported and helped each other, writing a new chapter of bilateral friendship.

Wang said China is ready to continue providing Mongolia with necessary help in fighting the epidemic, strengthen cooperation with Mongolia in the fields of mining, energy, finance, agriculture, husbandry and infrastructure construction, and innovate new forms and contents of people-to-people exchanges.

Battsetseg expressed the willingness to work with China to enrich the comprehensive strategic partnership between the two countries.

Following the talks, the two foreign ministers jointly met the press, and two sides issued a joint statement on further strengthening anti-epidemic cooperation.

The two sides welcomed the WHO-China joint report on the global tracing of COVID-19 origins, stressing that origin-tracing is a scientific work and should not be politicized.

They also called on the WHO Secretariat to cooperate with member states in accordance with relevant resolutions of the World Health Assembly to promote global origin tracing research.