Experts: China-CELAC cooperation will maintain momentum

The second high-level academic forum and the sixth think tank forum between China and the Community of Latin American and the Caribbean States were held Oct 12-13.

The Institute of Latin America Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences organized the forum in Beijing. Experts, officials, envoys and entrepreneurs from China, CALAC countries and the United Nations attended online.

The participants exchanged opinions on mutual learning between China and CELAC, the Belt and Road Initiative and the Healthy Silk Road, cooperation in emerging fields, and future cooperation in a new international landscape. The consensus among attendees was that China-CELAC relations had deepened during the pandemic and that the two sides should exploit the potential in the digital economy, energy transformation and climate change solutions.

Chile's former president Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagles said CELAC countries should have more solidarity to deal with challenges.

Long Guoqiang, vice-president of the Development Research Center of the State Council, said China's strength is the ability to make timely adjustments to the changing international situation.

Ricardo Palacios, medical director for clinical research at the Butantan Institute in Brazil, said “it was significant that China provided vaccines to the world from an early stage." Palacios also pointed out that while Western countries were focusing more on their world, China paid attention to developing countries vulnerable to the pandemic and in urgent need of vaccines.

According to Palacios, non-Western countries became and have remained the main sources of vaccines for developing countries, which was different from the expectation of Western vaccines.

Yue Yunxia, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Latin American Studies, CASS, said, “China's vaccine entry rate is positively correlated with CELAC countries' vaccination rate.”

Zhang Tuo, former Chinese ambassador to Bolivia, Venezuela and Cuba, said, if the pandemic cannot damage China-CELAC relations, no challenge will reverse the bilateral relations in the future.

The forum’s host also included the Bureau of International Cooperation of the CASS, the Chinese People’s Institute of Foreign Affairs, the China Institute of International Studies, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, and the China Foundation of International Studies and United Nations.