Voice
An Expanded Network
The China-CELAC Forum gets a boost from the Belt and Road Initiative
By Wang Huizhi  ·  2019-07-29  ·   Source: NO.31 AUGUST 1, 2019
A 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 13 (XINHUA)

Since 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 implementation 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, boosting the emergence of new platforms for cooperation.

How it works 

To translate cooperation into reality, the China-CELAC Forum has several main mechanisms: a ministerial meeting, dialogue of the foreign ministers of the grouping, and a meeting of senior officials. China has also set up a follow-up committee to coordinate the Chinese institutions involved in the bilateral engagements.

In addition, the forum has sub-forums covering a comprehensive range of 10 fields, from political parties and infrastructure 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 different 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-LAC Business 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, logistics 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 accounts for about one sixth of China-Latin America trade. In 2017, Zhuhai also hosted the first China-LAC International Expo, attended 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 relationship with CELAC on the basis of five salient 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 individual countries in the region.

Visitors walk by the booth of China Volant Industry during the Latin American Defense and Security Exhibition in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on April 2 (XINHUA)

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.

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 on official invitations while more than 4,000 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 between 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.

The fund, co-initiated by China's State Administration of Foreign Exchange and China Development Bank, provides medium- and long-term financing to major projects in the fields of manufacturing, new and high technology, agriculture, energy, infrastructure and finance in Latin America. 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 involvement 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 strategies 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.

The author is an assistant researcher with the China Institute of International Studies

Copyedited by Sudeshna Sarkar

Comments to yulintao@bjreview.com

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