Ladies and Gentlemen,

Good Evening! It is my great privilege and pleasure to host the dinner on behalf of Professor and Dr. CHEN Dongxiao. First of all, I would like to thank all the Chinese and foreign participants for your active participation and constructive contribution to the success of this conference. At the same time, I want to take this opportunity to share with you some of my personal thoughts on China-Latin America/Caribbean cooperation.

I have been thinking over the following three questions concerning with Sino-Latin American relationship. The first is what we have now in terms of this important relationship. In the past several decades we have established political, economic, cultural and people-to-people relations. Among about China’s 50 strategic partners around the world, Brazil is the first one establishing strategic partnership with China in 1993, almost 30 years ago. However, compared with other regions we have three things to do.

Firstly, China does not have a large contingent of capable people who understand both sides across the Pacific Ocean. Many Chinese even do not know the difference between Latin America and the Caribbean region. Ordinary Chinese know soccer, tango, and Samba, but very little beyond those.

Secondly, China lacks and needs more strategic partners and dialogues with Latin America and Caribbean region. For countries China has established diplomatic relations, Latin American countries occupied 20%, but there are only seven strategic partners in Latin America. It is a small portion. Strategic partnership sometimes is just a label. But sometimes are indeed very important. As Confucius said, if you do not have the proper names, you cannot do it properly. Before developing the relationship we have to discuss on how to look at mutual relationship. China has proposed for a China-Latin American Dialogue Forum, which invites different opinions. Therefore, it is even more imperative for us think tank people to discuss and look in the proposed Forum.

Thirdly, China and Latin America/Caribbean region do not have sufficient networking. China and the United States have almost 100 mechanisms and both sides discuss, debate and work for cooperation every month.

Latin America and Caribbean region is geographically and physically far away from China, which present more difficulties to our networking. We can have videoconference. It is good, but cannot replace face-to-face interaction like today. We need to do more to build out our networking at every level and in different stratum.

The second question is what we can do to enhance our mutual understanding and cooperation. We must have more contacts like this. Thanks to the three-decade plus of reform and opening-up, China has achieved great progresses. Our society is changing, and we’d like to invite more for this exchange, and write more in Portuguese and Spanish or in English on website, blog, twitter, etc. People are impatient, and we should use keywords about Latin America as much often as possible, upgrade martial and physical connections. In doing so, the yearly trading volume between us of USD 300 billion is not enough when considering the present need and future potential. We have to restructure of our economies and move our industries upward. We need exchange ideas more often to prepare for the future. We need contributions from different places. The Chinese need to lower its foreign reserve. The Latin American and Caribbean people should build up more. This is just like that the U.S. should spend less and China should save less. We need cultural and intellectual exchanges which has global implications.

The last question is about what we think tank people should and can contribute. First of all, we are professional people and we should use our professionalism to advice our respective governments to enhance our mutual understanding and cooperation. Moreover, we need to inform each other our worldviews, aiming targets, conditions and difficulties. Second track dialogues are very useful in this regard. Let us make face to face dialogue rather than read through the third party’s narration, sometimes are very much biased and even distorted. We need to directly tell the world our thinking. Finally, we need to keep abreast with the times and always have forward-looking visions. Let us join our efforts on the constructive side and create more positive energy in this important relationship.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

So long as we stay on the right track, our relations will develop in a deepening and broadening way. We are looking forward to our greater and more effective cooperation in the future and we scholars are proud of being part of these joint efforts.

Now may I propose a toast for the health of all of you and even brighter future of our mutual relationship!

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