China Offers an “Historic Opportunity” to Latin America, Chilean UN Official States

In the context of Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s May 24-25 visit to Chile, Alicia Barcena, Executive Secretary of the UN’s Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), remarked that “China is rapidly modifying the map of the world economy.”

In an opinion piece published in Mercopress on Tuesday, Barcena, who hosted a May 25 seminar at ECLAC, in which both Li Keqiang and President Michelle Bachelet participated, underscored that the great interest which China’s authorities have shown in strengthening ties with Latin America and the Caribbean “offers the region a historic opportunity.”

China, Barcena stressed, has made “outstanding efforts in terms of economic growth, international trade, foreign direct investment, technological innovation, and in its role as a source of international financing,” which has strengthened ties among emerging economies. This, she said, is “contributing to an unprecedented cycle of growth, trade, investment, poverty reduction, and progress” in the internationalization of the emerging economies, and as a result, the income gap between the developing nations and industrialized countries is shrinking.

Barcena pointed to the need to make progress in productivity, innovation, infrastructure, and training and education of human resources to reverse a “worrisome” trend toward increasing raw materials exports. China can help with that. Through last year’s BRICS summit in Fortaleza, Brazil, during which China’s President Xi Jinping reached cooperation agreements with leaders of CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States), and now with Li Keqiang’s tour of Brazil, Colombia, Peru, and Chile, Barcena affirmed that “this is a propitious moment to make a qualitative leap in the relationship between Latin America, the Caribbean and China.” The first step toward that goal should be implementation of the Cooperation Plan signed between China and CELAC for the period 2015-2019. Giving that plan very concrete contents, she emphasized, will also provide content to a future China-Latin America-Caribbean heads of state summit.