All members of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States can apply for commercial loans from China, which were initially proposed by President Xi Jinping on a visit to Brazil last year, a senior diplomat said on Monday.
The remarks by Zhu Qingqiao, Director-General of the Department of Latin American and Caribbean Affairs under the Foreign Ministry, suggested CELAC members without diplomatic ties with China can also have access to the loans.
Around a dozen CELAC members, including Paraguay and Haiti, have no formal diplomatic relationships with Beijing.
China and the CELAC will map out an overall plan guiding China-CELAC cooperation, including in the financial sector, during the first China-CELAC ministerial forum, which is set to be held in Beijing on Thursday and Friday, Zhu said at a press conference in Beijing.
More than 40 ministerial-level delegates, including 20 foreign ministers from the CELAC countries, have confirmed their attendance at the meeting, Zhu said.
The forum was established in July, 2014 after a meeting between Xi and leaders from China, Latin America and the Caribbean in Brasilia. It was the first collective meeting of China's president and leaders of Latin American and Caribbean countries.
In Brasilia, Xi proposed the creation of a $20 billion fund to finance infrastructure projects in Latin American and the Caribbean, and offered to extend a credit line of up to $10 billion to nations of CELAC via the Bank of China.
Su Zhenxing, a senior research fellow on Latin American studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said countries without diplomatic relationships with Beijing are not excluded as they have maintained trade links with China for a long period, albeit small in size, and China is fostering cooperation with the whole CELAC.
CELAC, established in December 2011, is the largest regional political cooperation in the Western Hemisphere and consist of 33 countries except the United States and Canada.
The forum in Beijing showed the group’s willingness to strengthen cooperation with China, especially in the economic sector, said Su.
The meeting is expected to formulate operational rules for the forum and provide guidance in cooperation areas, he added.
China is the second largest trading partner and third largest investment source for Latin America. Trade between Latin America, the Caribbean and China has seen a significant increase in recent years, reaching $261.6 billion in 2013.
Xi is scheduled to attend the forum’s opening ceremony on Thursday morning, along with Costa Rica President Luis Guillermo Solis, Ecuador President Rafael Correa Delgado, Bahamas Prime Minister Perry Christie and Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro Moros.
Source: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/
Showing posts with label China. Show all posts
Showing posts with label China. Show all posts
Monday, January 5, 2015
Controversy erupts after college blames victims
A screenshot of the website of Modern College of Northwest University shows a notice that says the Shanghai tragedy proves its holiday policies are "absolutely correct".
BEIJING - A college in Northwest China has been lambasted for issuing a controversial statement about the fatal New Year's Eve stampede in Shanghai, which left 36 people dead.
The Modern College of Northwest University in Xi'an City, capital of Shaanxi province, said on Friday that the tragedy proved that its holiday policies were "utterly correct".
In late December, the college reportedly banned its students from celebrating Christmas and instead on Christmas Eve made them watch traditional cultural films, which invited a storm of criticism.
Its official microblog account said that Chinese traditional festivals and culture were fading away as more people embraced Western traditions.
In an editorial titled "Shanghai stampede tragedy proves our holiday management utterly correct", posted on its website, the college said that if such a stampede occurred on Christmas Eve in Xi'an, the value of the college's holiday management would be "more self-evident".
It continued to bash public holidays by saying that the youth had become "overly infatuated" with Western holidays after decades of westernization in China, and that the stampede was a result of loose in college and university management.
The post has become a hot topic on the Internet, with some angry netizens calling the college "shameless" for justifying its value through the tragedy.
"It looks to me that the college is taking pleasure in others' misfortune," read one comment.
"In their logic, 2014 saw many plane crashes and I never took a flight, so that proves me 'utterly correct'?" said another netizen.
Others are more tolerant, saying that even though the wording might be a little rough, in essence the article made sense.
The college, perhaps in reaction to the media frenzy over its post, changed the title to "Deeply grieving the loss of our compatriots in the Shanghai stampede tragedy", but the content of the post remains unchanged.
Tan Kejian, a research fellow with the School of Sociology under the Shanxi Academy of Social Sciences, said the college's attitude toward holiday celebrations was negative and should not be adopted.
"You should not stop eating because of having hiccups," Tan said, quoting an old Chinese saying.
Instead of banning celebrations, authorities should ramp up preventive measures to avoid similar disasters, he added.
Tens of thousands of people assembled in Shanghai's historic riverfront walk, in the Pudong financial area, on Wednesday night to ring in the New Year. Most of those that lost their lives were young people.
Source: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Venezuelan oil minister back from China and Russia with financial support
Ramírez informed that he visited Beijing and Moscow in search of financial support and in order to review new energy projects.
"With the Vice-President of China, Li Yuanchao, we agreed on new borrowing facilities for our country and reviewed energy projects," the Pdvsa president twitted.
"China has expressed every support to the Bolivarian government of President Maduro and all the Venezuelan people. We will win! We also visited Moscow for a meeting with President (Vladimir) Putin, where the maximum support to our government and people was expressed," he added, DPA cited.
On Monday evening, President Maduro had claimed that nationwide demonstrations, taking a toll of 18 fatalities and more than 250 injured people, seek to destabilize the country and overthrow his government.
Source: El Universal
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