Xiplomacy: How China, LAC countries bolster shared development, boost Global South unity

BEIJING -- President Xi Jinping announced on Tuesday the launch of five major programs to advance China's shared development and revitalization with Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries at the just concluded fourth ministerial meeting of a key cooperation platform for the two sides in Beijing.

The five programs, ranging from solidarity, development and civilization to peace and people-to-people connectivity, provide a clear roadmap for deepening cooperation and advancing the common goals of both sides.

Over the past decade since the China-CELAC (the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) Forum was established, political trust between China and LAC countries has been strengthened, their development strategies aligned, and cultural exchanges promoted.

FROM SAPLING TO PILLAR

The seeds of the forum were sown in July 2014, when President Xi paid a state visit to Brazil and attended the first meeting between leaders of China and LAC countries.

At that meeting in Brasilia almost 11 years ago, the leaders agreed to establish the China-CELAC Forum, an institutional framework to advance the vision of building a China-LAC community with a shared future.

"At that meeting, President Xi held a very frank dialogue with Latin American leaders, focusing on issues such as poverty alleviation and infrastructure improvement," recalled Valdemar Carneiro Leao, who witnessed the historic event as then Brazilian ambassador to China.

"The China-CELAC Forum is a newborn, just like a young shoot sprouting out of the earth, whose sturdy growth into a towering tree needs meticulous cultivation of both sides," Xi said at the first ministerial meeting of the forum in 2015.

In his keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the fourth ministerial meeting of the forum on Tuesday, Xi revisited the metaphor, saying that 10 years on, with dedicated nurturing of both sides, the forum has grown from a tender sapling into a towering tree.

Having witnessed how China-LAC relations have withstood global turbulence with ever-growing mutual political trust, Leao said Xi's initiative to create the China-CELAC Forum has a forward-looking vision of the times.

Since its inception, the forum has grown into a robust platform for cooperation as China and the CELAC Quartet have held eight rounds of foreign ministerial dialogues to date, alongside more than 100 events spanning agricultural production, technological innovation, poverty reduction, green development, disaster response, defense cooperation, think tank exchanges and anti-corruption efforts.

Meanwhile, a range of institutional platforms, including the China-LAC Sustainable Food Innovation Center and the China-LAC Technology Transfer Center, have also taken root, helping the forum become a pillar of China-LAC cooperation.

"China-LAC cooperation has experienced a splendid golden decade, and is about to enter an even more promising diamond decade," said Song Junying, director of the Department for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the China Institute of International Studies.