Chinese President Xi Jinping said he paid "high attention" to strengthening strategic ties with Sri Lanka, as Beijing beefed up plans to build a Maritime Silk Road project in India's backyard -- the Indian Ocean. 

In a message to congratulate Sri Lanka on its 70th anniversary of Independence, Xi told his counterpart Maithripala Sirisena that China is willing to work with it for better development of strategic cooperative partnership between the two countries.

"I pay high attention to the development of China-Sri Lanka relations, and I am willing to make concerted efforts with President Sirisena to push the China-Sri Lanka strategic cooperative partnership of sincere mutual assistance and long-standing friendship to keep achieving greater development in the better interest of the two countries and its people," he said. 

Xi also said that China and Sri Lanka have achieved "fruitful results" by their display of "pragmatic cooperation" within the framework of the joint construction of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road (MSR).  (With Inputs from Economic Times of India)