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Feature: China connected like a nearby neighbor of Rarotonga

Xinhua, February 20, 2017 Adjust font size:

Asked what the carton printed with "Sinotrans" was, Colin Rattle took it down from the bookshelf in his studio, saying it was for the driller parts he ordered from China.

He bought them from a factory based in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, and he did the shopping through the Alibaba online service, said the black pearl ornaments designer.

Online shopping has made Rattle feel China is not so distant from his home on Rarotonga of the Cook Islands in the South Pacific. "I can buy anything. Yes, China is making almost everything," he told the Xinhua correspondent.

Thanks to China's well-known e-commerce platform Alibaba, Rattle also bought a China-made wood-cutting lathe. Its magnet parts demands special packaging and a freight up to nearly half its price. However, the total spending is still less than buying from the much nearer New Zealand.

The Xinhua correspondent suggested that using Chinese to communicate with Chinese enterprises may bring more discounts. His wife Niki believes this is a rather good idea.

Learning Chinese is not a wish hard to realize here. The Confucius classroom of the Cook Islands campus of the University of the South Pacific is located on Rarotonga, the major island of the self-governing island country.

In fact, there are many more Chinese marks on the Cooks Islands.

They include buildings for the supreme court and the police station and a stadium, which were built by the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC).

The latest completed among the CCECC-contracted projects here is a water supply pipe network ringing Rarotonga, with New Zealand as the third party.

Prime Minister Henry Puna told Xinhua it is the largest infrastructure project on the Cook Islands. It will not only help provide cleaner drinking water for the islanders, but also improve the local tourism capability, benefiting economic growth.

During the launch ceremony held on Feb. 16, he expressed gratitude to the Chinese government, opening the valve together with Zhang Xiangchen, China's deputy international trade representative with the Ministry of Commerce.

A 10-meter-high water column was then spewed out, amid cheers of a group of children who rushed to play with it. Endi