Envoy: China's growth helps Argentina

Argentina expects its commerce and relations with China to further benefit from the growing Chinese domestic market as well as the nation's increasing role on the global stage, Buenos Aires' top envoy to Beijing said.

"I really think that in the last 30 years, the process of opening and reform in China has no comparison with any other process in world history," Diego Ramiro Guelar, Argentina's ambassador to China, told China Daily.

Guelar said he is interested in how the country's leadership will consolidate the domestic market at the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in October.

"Many people, inside and outside China, are not aware that imports are growing twice as fast as exports... because the huge middle class demands more products from overseas," he said. That, he added, is very good for countries like Argentina that are increasing exports.

In the first six months of this year, two-way trade between China and Argentina reached $5.25 billion, with Argentina's exports to China, mainly soy products, crude oil and leather, accounting for $1.37 billion.

This year marks the 45th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Argentina. But trade between the countries started much earlier.

China imported large amounts of wheat from Argentina in the 1960s. "That was the beginning of our relationship," Guelar said.

It was announced late last month that China will further open the beef market and reopen its soy oil market to Argentina, a major producer of agricultural products, he added.

Argentina is renewing the country's railroad network "basically through cooperation with China".

Guelar said he will concentrate on further boosting the relationship, especially in terms of cultural exchanges and tourism, during the two years that he has left at his post in China.

He hopes more than 100,000 Chinese people will visit Argentina in the next couple of years.

Progress, peace and win-win relations are the three words Guelar used to summarize China's current situation.

"The well-being of China is not at the expense of the development of third countries or partners in any way," he said. "This is original. It's never happened in world history, and is very positive for all the members of the planet."

He also said Argentina agreed with China that the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula should be solved through peaceful negotiations and not through conflict.

"China is the first superpower in the world that has peaceful proposals."

According to Guelar, China's presidency of the G20 in 2016, the Belt and Road Forum in May and the BRICS Summit in Xiamen "are all different aspects of this new role of China as a world leader".

"What China has achieved, especially during the last five years, is extraordinarily positive," he added.

Zhou Jin contributed to the story.

mojingxi@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 09/07/2017 page3)