http://www.bjreview.com AUGUST 1, 2019 BEIJING REVIEW 27
Copyedited by Sudeshna Sarkar
Comments to [email protected]People-to-people exchanges have also
become one of the important directions for
bilateral ties. There are regular exchanges
between legislatures, political parties and
local authorities and cooperation in science
and technology, education, culture and
tourism, contributing to a growing interest
in each other.
Till now, over 1,000 LAC political party
leaders and members have visited China
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people from LAC countries are studying
in China. A China-LAC joint laboratory for
clean energy and climate change, a China-
LAC Press Center, demonstration farms and
Confucius institutes and classrooms have
enriched the content and form of people-
to-people exchanges.
A new journey
The bilateral ties have entered a new stage
with the development of the Belt and Road
Initiative and the LAC countries’ participation.
Before the initiative was extended to
Latin America, financial integration be-
tween China and LAC countries had started.
On September 1, 2015, the People’s Bank
of China, China’s central bank, announced
the establishment of a $10-billion fund to
support China’s industrial cooperation with
LAC countries.
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AThe fund, co-initiated by China’s State
Administration of Foreign Exchange and
China Development Bank, provides me-
dium- and long-term financing to major
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and high technology, agriculture, energy,
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By June 2017, the fund had provided more
than $140 billion in loans to LAC countries.
In May 2017, Chinese President Xi
Jinping met Argentine President Mauricio
Macri at the First Belt and Road Forum for
International Cooperation in Beijing. Xi
told his Argentine counterpart that Latin
America is the natural extension of the
21st-Century Maritime Silk Road. China is
ready to expand cooperation with Latin
America, including aligning their respective
development strategies through the Belt
and Road Initiative, and jointly building a
community with a shared future.
Xi also met with then Mexican President
Enrique Peña Nieto, who was in China to
attend the Dialogue of Emerging Market
and Developing Countries during the BRICS
Summit in Xiamen City, Fujian Province
in southeast China, in September 2017.
Xi welcomed Mexico’s increasing involve-
ment in the Belt and Road Initiative and its
positioning as a key node of the initiative’s
natural extension in Latin America.In November that year, during talks
with visiting Panamanian President Juan
Carlos Varela, Xi said China regards Latin
America as an indispensable partner for
the Belt and Road Initiative, and both sides
should synergize their development strate-
gies to complement each other. He also
suggested that Panama could utilize its
unique geographical position to cooperate
more with China on ports, maritime affairs,
shipping, railways and logistics to jointly
implement the Belt and Road Initiative and
improve world connectivity.
The second ministerial meeting of the
China-CELAC Forum in January 2018 led to
19 LAC countries, such as Panama, Cuba
and Peru, signing cooperation documents
with China under the framework of the Belt
and Road Initiative.
Over the past five years, the China-
CELAC Forum has grown vigorously.
Although the integration of LAC countries
has temporarily reached an impasse and
there are external forces obstructing the
cooperation, the endogenous driving
force for cooperation remains strong with
the new impetus from the Belt and Road
Initiative. QA train with its wagons made in China departs from Havana Central, the main railway terminal in Havana, to Santiago de Cuba, Cuba’s second largest city, on July 13WORLD