Metallurgical of China : Guo Wenqing Attends Online Roundtable Conference of China-Chile Business Council

Guo Wenqing Attends Online Roundtable Conference of China-Chile Business Council

Emphasis is placed on expanding the exchange of information policy, strengthening the interconnection of investment plans, deepening economic and trade cooperation and mutual integration, and vigorously promoting deeper and more solid cooperation between Chinese and Chilean enterprises.

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　　In the evening of September 27, Guo Wenqing, the Chinese Chairman of the China-Chile Business Council (CCBC), General Manager of China Minmetals and Chairman of MCC, attended and delivered a speech at the Online Roundtable Conference of China-Chile Business Council in Beijing. Andrés Allamand, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Chile, Wang Shouwen, Vice Minister and Deputy Representative of China International Trade, Rodrigo Yáñez, Chile's Deputy Minister of Trade and General Director of International Economic Relations of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Francisco Silva, Chilean Chairman of CCBC and Chairman of the Board, Banco de Valores de Chile, took part in this conference. The conference was chaired by Liu Zuozhang, Executive Vice President of China Council for International Investment Promotion (CCIIP).

　　On behalf of China Minmetals, Chinese Committee of CCBC, Guo Wenqing expressed his gratitude to the Chilean Committee for their mutual cooperation and support over the years, and expressed his sincere thanks to the Chilean Committee and Chilean entrepreneurs for their care and help to Chinese enterprises and China Minmetals in his opening speech.

　　Guo pointed out that since its establishment in 2005, nine annual meetings of CCBC had successfully been held, making it one of the highest-standard and largest forums in the field of economy, trade and investment between the two countries. In the past 15 years, the Council has built up a road of cooperation across the Pacific Ocean played an important role as a platform in coordinating the important visits of the two governments, promoting the implementation of the Chinese-Chilean Free Trade Agreement (FTA) and developing the economic, trade and investment relations between China and Chile. CCBC works as an important engine for expanding the development of enterprises in China and Chile, which was highly valued and unanimously affirmed by the two governments.

　　Guo stressed that China and Chile are located at opposite ends of the globe and far apart as they are, their hearts are interlinked. This year, China and Chile are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries. Faced with the sudden and severe pandemic, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Chilean President Sebastián Piñera spoke on the phone and reached an important consensus to make full use of the FTA, jointly fight against COVID-19 pandemic, and promote the restoration of economic and trade order as well as the long-term and stable development of international trade and investment. CCBC responded positively and took the initiative to convene several video conferences with the Secretariat, discussed strategies on dealing with the impact of the pandemic, promoted online policy services, and assisted in solving the difficulties faced by enterprises during the pandemic. China Minmetals, as one of the earliest enterprises participating in the Sino-Chilean economic and trade cooperation, overcame the difficulties of the pandemic and actively donated pandemic prevention supplies to the Chilean government and relevant industrial associations. This cooperation has added new vitality to the traditional friendship between China and Chile and injected new connotations into the comprehensive strategic partnership.

　　Guo noted that the international situation is undergoing profound and complex changes, and both China and Chile are at a critical stage of development, facing similar opportunities and challenges. As President Xi Jinping has called for, 'We must be proactive so that the Chinese-Chilean relationship will continue to be at the forefront of the Sino-Latin American relationship'. In the next step, Chinese Committee will work closely with the Chilean Committee as always, and make further good use of the CCBC, a bilateral enterprise dialogue and cooperation mechanism, to expand information policy exchange, strengthen the interconnection of investment plans, deepen economic and trade cooperation and mutual integration. They will solve key issues such as the pandemic prevention and control, and demands, opinions and difficulties in the way of resumption of work and production and vigorously promote deeper and more solid Chinese-Chilean enterprise cooperation relations.

　　Guo highlighted that the pandemic will eventually be defeated by us. Our days will go on, and we will continue to climb up more mountains, travel more roads and the prospects for cooperation between China and Chile will be even broader and vaster. Let's unite, fraternize, move forward hand in hand, and take the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Chile as an opportunity to push the China-Chile enterprise friendship and cooperation to a higher level, and jointly create a brighter future for China-Chile relations.

　　Francisco Silva pointed out in his speech that December 15 of this year marks the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Chile and China, and in this context, the Online Roundtable Conference of CCBC has played an important role in promoting economic and trade relations and business dialogue between the two countries. The cooperation with mutual benefits between Chile and China has demonstrated that countries with different cultures and different geographical environments can still carry out sincere cooperation on the basis of seeking common interests and sharing results, especially in commerce and trade. Various data suggest the extraordinary achievements of cooperation between the two countries in recent years. The sudden COVID-19 pandemic had created enormous challenges around the world and increased uncertainty about world economic growth, while the unilateral measures taken by some countries had seriously undermined multilateralism at the global level. The most effective way out of these quandaries is to cooperate on an equal footing and establish a multilateral system that can regulate trade and investment. CCBC should further strengthen its functions, broaden trade prospects, formulate favorable policies and maximize the currency of goods, services and investment in order to build up more pragmatic and constructive bilateral relations.

　　Andrés Allamand pointed out in his speech that this December 15 observes 50th anniversary of China-Chile diplomatic relations. Chile highly praised the exchanges in politics, economy and culture between the two countries and has been thinking highly of the bilateral relations, in particular of economic and trading relations, with China. Chilean government always believes that it's of great significance to safeguard free trade and oppose to trade protectionism. Under current international conditions, it's especially vital to formulate a non-discriminatory open trade system on the foundation of basic principles and transparency rules to manage to go out of global economic crisis. In the present global context, both two countries should further improve exchanges and cooperation to establish a more pragmatic and more constructive bilateral relation. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Chile will support economic and trade cooperation between Chile and China as always and continue to promote economic growth and amicable relations between the two countries. Meanwhile, Chilean government extended sincere gratitude to Chinese government's selfless aids to Chile during fighting against COVID-19 pandemic.

　　Followed were keynote speeches respective by Wang Shouwen and Rodrigo Yañez over 'Future Outlook of Chinese-Chilean Economic Development and Economic and Trade Cooperation under the Outbreak of the Pandemic'. Wang indicated that the global spread of outbreak is imposing arduous tasks of defense against epidemic, economic stability and livelihood protection on all countries. China and Chile overcame difficulties and organized online roundtable in an innovative way, signaling outwards the positiveness of tiding over difficulties and working together, to promote rapid economic recovery in two countries. In recent years, a series of major consensuses were reached in multiple meetings between leaders of the two countries, which gave directions to bilateral relation maintenance and economic and trade cooperation. With the joint effort of Chinese and Chilean governments and enterprises, bilateral economic and trade cooperation has yielded fruitful results which attributed to 'Belt and Road Initiative', a 'Big Platform' toward win-win situation, as well as China-Chile FTA, a 'main engine' for improving and upgrading bilateral economic and trade cooperation. Despite that China's economic growth slowed down and foreign trade and investment were hit because of the outbreak, China will never stop its path of opening up, but speed up instead. China will continue to reduce tariffs, constantly expand market access for industries such as finance, service, manufacturing, agriculture and infrastructure, actively quicken free trade area construction, further optimize foreign-funded business environment, and provide wider market and development opportunities for Chile and other countries. Standing at a new historical starting point, China, together with Chile, is willing to put major consensuses reached by leasers of the two countries into practice, to enhance development strategy docking and to promote Chinese-Chilean economic and trade relations to develop in a higher, wider and deeper way.

　　Rodrigo Yáñez suggested in his speech that many topics of mutual interests were discussed in previous annual meetings of CCBC and the purpose is to create a business environment with mutual understanding for entrepreneurs in China and Chile, which is an important foundation for getting over difficulties and spanning across cultural differences. Although COVID-19 pandemic engendered great challenges on bilateral economic relations, two countries' economic and trade cooperation based on bilateral FTA will carry on its good momentum since 2006 and boom the economy into prosperity. Under new international situation, we are required to strengthen cooperation, revitalize global economy led by digital economy development, and especially endeavor to satisfy domestic needs and expand services and digital products exports. Both Chile and China are facing the challenges against the context of speedy changes in global economic layout, but we believed that the difficulties are also opportunities which are bound to propel two countries' intimacy in economic and trade cooperation, so as to build up Chile-China relation of 'Economic Recovery Partners'.

　　After listening carefully to speeches by the guests, Guo made closing remarks on behalf of Chinese Committee of CCBC. He pointed out that all leaders' speeches reviewed the development process of economy, trade and investment between the two countries, introduced unforgettable experiences of joint defense against the outbreak in this year, and looked forward to the bright future of cooperation between China and Chile enterprises, in particular that Vice Minister Wang Shouwen specified in his words a large number of cases of investment and cooperation between enterprises of the two countries, which once again reaffirmed the great achievement of mutual cooperation in economy and trading and broad prospect of cooperation in Chinese and Chilean enterprises.

　　He pointed out that all leaders' speeches reviewed the development process of economy, trade and investment between the two countries, introduced unforgettable experiences of joint defense against the outbreak in this year, and looked forward to the bright future of cooperation between China and Chile enterprises, in particular that Vice Minister Wang Shouwen specified in his words a large number of cases of investment and cooperation between enterprises of the two countries, which once again reaffirmed the great achievement of mutual cooperation in economy and trading and broad prospect of cooperation in Chinese and Chilean enterprises.

　　After taking suggestions from all parties into consideration, Guo proposed to promote and strengthen the work of CCBC from following three aspects:

　　First, it is necessary to strengthen information exchange and sharing, and give full play to the role of the Council as a bridge. More efforts should be made to promote the economic and trade investment policies of the two countries, better collect and give feedback to the opinions and suggestions from enterprises of both countries, and boost 'Belt and Road' construction to connect deeply with Chile's development strategy.

　　Second, it is required to build up a broader cooperation platform to promote the development of enterprises in two countries at a higher level. Attempts should be made to organize regular online seminars, online docking and other activities, deepen exploration in infrastructure, energy, mining and other advantageous fields, and accelerate the cultivation of new highlights in emerging fields such as digital economy, medical and health, to give impetus to the diversified development of trade and investment cooperation in enterprises of the two countries.

　　Third, efforts should be made to expand the membership group and further enhance the universality and representativeness of the Council. It is of necessity to adhere to openness and inclusiveness, give full play to the flexible operation mechanism of the Council, expand membership base, and attract participation of more excellent enterprises from China and Chile, so as to continuously inject vitality and impetus into the deepening cooperation between China and Chile.

　　Guo finally underscored that at the important moment of the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Chile, and at the critical point of the establishment of CCBC for 15 years, the Committees of two parties will live up to the trust and expectations of the governments and enterprises of the two countries, unite all members and partners to help each other overcome obstacles, stick to exploration and innovation, and continue to play an important role in deepening the traditional friendly exchanges between the two countries, pushing China-Chile economic and trade development to a new level and creating a model of international cooperation.

　　Jiao Jian, Deputy General Manager of the China Minmetals, attended the conference. Attendees also included relevant personnel of relevant headquarters departments and directly managed enterprises, namely Xue Fei, Zeng Gang, Liu Lijun, Xing Yan, Zhu Haitao, Xu Jiqing, He Ruijuan, Lu Zhifang, Yang Ruobing. More than 300 members of the CCBC member units attended the meeting by online conference.

　　Guo Wenqing Attends Online Roundtable Conference of China-Chile Business Council

　　Opening Speech by Guo Wenqing

　　Scene of the Meeting