Spotlight: Chinese premier's LatAm tour to boost cooperation, sound world order

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang Monday kicked off a four-country Latin America tour to boost cooperation and ties amid concerted efforts to establish a just world order.

During the tour from May 18 to May 26, Li is expected to meet with leaders of Brazil, Colombia, Peru and Chile to explore ways of strengthening cooperation in such areas as industry, infrastructure, technology, culture and education, among others, as part of the comprehensive cooperation between China and Latin America.

Both experiencing an economic growth slowdown, the two sides are restructuring their economies, and need to promote win-win cooperation, Wu Baiyi, director of the Latin America Institute under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told Xinhua in an interview.

"The two sides have to join hands to better penetrate global value chains and in this way strengthen their development and influence in global governance," Wu said.

INTENSIFIED BILATERAL AND COLLECTIVE COOPERATION

During Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to Latin America in July 2014, the two sides launched the China-CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) Forum to establish an extensive and well-designed network to foster comprehensive development and cooperation.

The creation of this new cooperation mechanism signalled a new stage in the China-Latin America ties, and has promoted three-tiered cooperation: between China and an individual country, between China and sub-regional organizations, and between China and CELAC which gathers all 33 countries in Latin America.

Just six months after its foundation, the first China-CELAC ministerial meeting took place in Beijing and led to the approval of a five-year plan that outlined key areas and measures for deepening cooperation.

Above all, signatory countries pledged to raise the bilateral trade volume to 500 billion U.S. dollars in the next decade, while China promised to increase investment in the region to at least 250 billion dollars during the same period.

According to Wu, Premier Li's visit will be important to "achieving an early harvest" in all-round cooperation between the two, "because these four Latin American countries have everything to foster cooperation both on an individual basis and collectively."

China's Deputy Trade Minister Tong Daochi explained that Brazil, Colombia, Peru and Chile are all major Latin American countries, and also China's main economic and trade partners in the region.

Official figures show China has been Brazil's biggest trade partner for six years in a row. Meanwhile, it has been Chile and Peru's biggest trade partner, and Colombia's second-biggest.

Li's visit will "consolidate one stage in the relationship between China and Latin America, and opens another new stage," said Osvaldo Rosales, director of International Trade and Integration at the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

CONTRIBUTION TO GLOBAL ECONOMIC GROWTH

China and CELAC together have a third of the world's population, a fifth of the planet's territory and an eighth of the global economy, and represent major forces that can spur the sluggish recovery of the global economy.

Over the past decade, even when the global financial crisis rampaged in 2008, both China and Latin America have showed strong resilience and steady growth potential.

Currently both China and Latin America have seen the economic development slowing down, and face similar challenges in their push to transform and restructure the economy.

Enrique Garcia, executive president of the Development Bank of Latin America, believes the two sides face a good opportunity to modernize bilateral cooperation in their concerted efforts to deepen reforms.

"Now that prices are going to come down, China's growth rate is going to be lower, and Latin America isn't in crisis, it is a good time to take the right steps and make a productive transformation that is inclusive and sustainable," he said.

Li's visit is aimed to promote cooperation in expanding production capacity and to tap the cooperation potential beyond traditional areas like mineral resources, energy and agriculture in a wider range of sectors, from finance to manufacturing, technology, aerospace and infrastructure.

In Brazil, the two sides will sign a series of bilateral accords, including an agreement on a joint study of the feasibility of building an railway connecting the Brazilian Atlantic coast with the Peruvian Pacific coast, as an export corridor through South America.

Xu Shicheng, a researcher with the Latin America Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the cooperation to boost production capacity can serve as a springboard for the economic transformation of both sides.

"The cooperation between China and Latin America in production capacity can help the latter turn the advantage of its resources into an advantage of its industries, and in this way lift bilateral cooperation to a higher level and make it more fruitful," Xu said.

RESHAPING WORLD ORDER

As developing countries gain more economic strength, the global political landscape will undergo profound and complex changes, because these countries are showing greater willingness and strength to reject an unfair and irrational political and economic world order. ( The existing world order imposed by developed countries continues to place developing countries at a disadvantage when it comes to drafting international rules and regulations, as was the case with proposed reforms of the International Monetary Fund quotas.

No developing country alone is capable of changing the existing world order. Such countries should unite to strengthen the South-South cooperation and speak with one voice to preserve their common interests.

"The structure of world power has changed," said Garcia. "Latin America must insert itself more effectively in the interests of the South, and to do that there must be greater consensus. It must not present itself to the world in fragments, but try to establish a common denominator on core issues."

China and Latin American and Caribbean countries share similar needs and opinions on the democratization of international relations, the principle of "common but differentiated responsibility" on climate change, and pursue reforms of the global financial system, he noted.

Bruno Ayllon, a researcher at Ecuador's Advanced National Studies Institute, said the China-Latin America cooperation represents a "political outlook" that seeks "a much more multilateral world, where the new centers of power succeed in balancing out the hegemony of the Western nations."

China and Latin America are not looking to overthrow the current world order, but to modify it through peaceful means in the interest of a more just, democratic and balanced future of the human being, he said.

ECLAC Executive Secretary Alicia Barcena has described Latin America as a peaceful and stable force that "can be part of the solution to many global problems." Endi