26 BEIJING REVIEW AUGUST 1, 2019 http://www.bjreview.comS
ince its inception five years ago, the
China-CELAC (Community of Latin
American and the Caribbean States)
Forum has served as an important platform
for bilateral cooperation, providing a strong
institutional guarantee for the imple-
mentation of the political consensus and
cooperation plans between the two sides.
It has become a major mechanism to work
together in a wide range of areas, boost-
ing the emergence of new platforms for
cooperation.How it works
To translate cooperation into reality, the
China-CELAC Forum has several mainBusiness Summit.
In 2016, the first China-LAC Industrial
Park was established in Tangshan City,
north China’s Hebei Province, to enhance
trade cooperation by providing services
such as e-commerce, legal aid and policy
research. The enterprises operating from
the nearly 70-square-km park are mainly in
equipment manufacturing, chemicals, lo-
gistics and industrial capacity cooperation.
The following year, the Hengqin
China-Latin America Economic and Trade
Cooperation Park was constructed in
Hengqin New Area in Zhuhai City in south
China’s Guangdong Province, which ac-
counts for about one sixth of China-Latin
America trade. In 2017, Zhuhai also hosted
the first China-LAC International Expo, at-
tended by exhibitors from 24 LAC member
countries.
Overall cooperation has been playing
an increasingly important role. According
to the second policy paper on LAC released
by the Chinese Government in 2016, China
is committed to building a new relation-
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features: sincerity and mutual trust in the
political field, win-win cooperation on the
economic front, mutual learning in culture,
close coordination in international affairs,
as well as mutual reinforcement between
China’s cooperation with the region as a
whole and its bilateral relations with indi-
vidual countries in the region.Energizing plan
With the implementation of several plans,
bilateral cooperation in economy, trade,
cultural and people-to-people exchanges
has made rapid progress.
Traditional trade between China and
LAC countries was characterized by the
exchange of manufactured goods for raw
materials. The 2015-19 cooperation plan
set a target of $500 billion in bilateral trade
and $250 billion in investment stock within
a decade. It also identified cooperation in
trade, investment, finance, infrastructure,
energy, agriculture, industry, technology
and aerospace. It gave the cooperation
broader scope, a more balanced structure
and improvement in quality.XIN
HU
Amechanisms: a ministerial meeting,
dialogue of the foreign ministers of the
JURXSLQJDQGDPHHWLQJRIVHQLRURIĶFLDOV
China has also set up a follow-up commit-
tee to coordinate the Chinese institutions
involved in the bilateral engagements.
In addition, the forum has sub-forums
covering a comprehensive range of 10
ĶHOGVIURPSROLWLFDOSDUWLHVDQGLQIUDVWUXF
ture cooperation to cooperation between
local governments and people-to-people
exchanges.
The two sides have adopted the China-
Latin American and Caribbean Countries
Cooperation Plan (2015-19) and the Joint
Action Plan of China-LAC (Latin America
and the Caribbean) Cooperation (2019-21)
to plan key areas of cooperation in differ-
ent periods and identify measures in those
areas.
The year 2018 alone witnessed several
important bilateral activities such as the
second Meeting of China-CELAC Political
Parties’ Forum, the second Seminar
on China and LAC: Dialogue Between
Civilizations, and the 12th China-LAC7KHó&KLQD&(/$&ó)RUXPóJHWVóDóERRVWóIURPóWKHó%HOWóDQGó5RDGó,QLWLDWLYHóBy Wang Huizhi
Visitors walk by the booth of China Volant Industry during the Latin American Defense and Security Exhibition in Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil, on April 2An Expanded Network
WORLD
The author is an assistant
researcher with the China
Institute of International
Studies