Chinese Premier Li Keqiang's just-concluded Latin American tour inspires fresh modes of China-LatAm cooperation while ushering in a new era South-South cooperation, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has said.[Special coverage]
The Chinese premier's tour of Latin America further promotes the China-LatAm comprehensive strategic partnership, Wang told reporters following the conclusion of Li's visit to Chile, the last leg of his four-nation trip, which also took him to Brazil, Colombia and Peru.
Last year, Chinese President Xi Jinping paid a historic visit to Latin America. The two sides agreed to build a comprehensive partnership featuring equality, mutual benefit and common development.
Wang said Li's visit, also a milestone yielding fruitful results, highlighted pragmatic cooperation in various fields, including production capacity, finance, infrastructure and people-to-people exchanges.
The visit, Wang said, brings China's high-quality production capacity and equipment to Latin America, which will benefit economic and trade ties as well as the cooperation between the two sides and serve as an exemplary model for South-South cooperation.
In the past years, China-LatAm cooperation mainly relied on China's import of Latin America's agricultural products and investment in the continent's mining industry.
Despite generating tangible benefits for both China and Latin America, the old mode of cooperation requires upgrading due to the two countries' development, Wang said.
Latin America aspires for economic diversification and faster industrialization while China has been deepening its economic structural reform, aiming for a large quantity of high-quality production capacity and equipment to go global.
The production capacity cooperation enables the two sides to dovetail their development strategies at a higher level and foster a fresh mode of cooperation that features strong complementarity, Wang said.
With China's high-quality production capacity and equipment, Latin America will be able to advance its process of industrialization at a lower cost and higher starting point, the official said, with the possibility of more potential for China-LatAm cooperation.
Addressing the Santiago-based Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Li reiterated his proposal of the new mode of production capacity cooperation dubbed "three times three." "Three times three" means the joint construction of three passages for logistics, electric power and information, giving full play to the interaction among the three entities of private sector, society and the government and using three financing channels including funding, credit loans and insurance.
The "three times three" mode not only suits the needs of Latin America, but also inspires new channels for high-level cooperation between China and other developing countries, especially emerging economies, thus ushering in a new era for South-South cooperation, Wang said.
In addition, the new mode also provides new means for North-South cooperation, the minister said.
As mentioned by Li on many occasions, part of the high-quality production capacity transferred from China to Latin America comes from enterprises from developed countries, Wang said, citing key spare parts of Brazil's subway cars and ferries as examples.
In that sense, Wang said, those developed countries are also part of the China-LatAm production capacity cooperation as the two sides continue to deepen their cooperative ties.
In face of the global economic slowdown and lingering effect of the global financial crisis, it is very important for China to engage in global cooperation, the official said.
Therefore, China-LatAm production capacity cooperation, which is open to third parties, does not only seek win-win results for China and Latin America, but also an all-win scenario for both developing and developed countries, Wang said.
