General

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between China and Argentina, as well as the year of China Argentina friendly cooperation. In February this year, China and Argentina issued a joint statement to deepen the China Arab comprehensive strategic partnership and signed a memorandum of understanding on jointly building the "the Belt and Road", raising bilateral relations to a new height. During this period, China Arab economic and trade cooperation was also heating up.

From the data of the first three quarters of this year, the trade performance between China and Latin America is better than the overall performance of China's trade, while the performance of China Arab international trade is better than the overall performance of China Latin America trade.

According to Chinese customs statistics, in the first three quarters, China Arab international trade reached 15.511 billion US dollars, up 29.2% year on year. Among them, China's exports to Afghanistan reached US $10.223 billion, up 33.7% year on year; Imports from Afghanistan reached 5.288 billion US dollars, up 21.3% year on year. Over the same period, China Latin America's total trade, China's exports and imports grew by 12.5%, 18.6% and 6.5% respectively.

On the new journey, how to better build consensus between China and Argentina, jointly cope with the challenges posed by the century's great changes and the century's epidemic situation, and promote economic and social development and modernization, has become a key topic for experts and scholars attending the China Argentina Think Tank Dialogue on "Global Development and Governance".

Cooperation model

China and Argentina are models of solidarity, cooperation, mutual benefit and win-win results for developing countries. With the deepening of bilateral relations, in recent years, the academic circles of the two countries have significantly expanded the breadth and depth of cooperation through more institutional exchanges such as joint research centers, bilateral think tank forums, and civilization dialogue activities. The research report "China Argentina Academic Exchange and Cooperation for 50 Years" released at the meeting pointed out that since the 21st century, especially with the establishment of China Argentina comprehensive strategic partnership, the academic exchanges between the two countries have become closer and closer, and a number of high-quality achievements have emerged. "China Studies" has become an important research direction of Argentine academia.

"In the field of development, we especially need to cooperate with countries like China and learn from each other." Gonzalo Gigino, coordinator of the Confucius Institute of Cordoba National University in Argentina and researcher of the National Science and Technology Research Council of Argentina, proposed that China's rise has broken the global development model of neo liberalism and moved from the edge of the world stage to the center. China adheres to improving its independent development, promoting common prosperity for all people, realizing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, and promoting international trade cooperation with the concept of "benevolent government". China is willing to provide Argentina and Latin American countries with more development opportunities, which will help enhance the international status of Latin America and achieve global shared development. China's development experience is of great significance to Latin America and will have a profound impact on China Arab bilateral relations.

Julian Repon, Secretary General for Advanced Studies of the School of Social Sciences of Buenos Aires University, Argentina, said that the School of Social Sciences of Buenos Aires University was willing to continue to strengthen high-quality cooperation with China and contribute more strength to think tanks to promote the comprehensive strategic partnership between the two countries to a new level.

As developing countries, China and Argentina share similar development goals, high trade complementarity and broad common interests. Both sides have the need to further deepen cooperation. Yu Tao, Deputy Director of the China Foreign Language and Culture Administration, pointed out that the two countries should strengthen scientific and technological innovation and green cooperation, and carry out practical cooperation around clean energy, digital technology, agricultural science and technology, satellite communications and other fields under the framework of the "the Belt and Road" construction, so as to enable high-quality development of the two countries with scientific and technological innovation; Adhere to genuine multilateralism, promote the implementation of the global development initiative, and inject new impetus into deepening China Arab and China Latin America all-round cooperation.

Deepen cooperation

While China Argentina relations have made a series of new progress, they also face challenges such as weak trade structure, insufficient financial cooperation, and instability caused by cyclical political and economic factors. According to Chen Yuanting, director of the International Relations Research Office of the Latin American Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, strengthening solidarity and cooperation and deepening the comprehensive strategic partnership is the only way to promote the common development of international trade between the two countries.

Chen Yuanting suggested that China and Argentina strengthen political mutual trust and practical cooperation, promote high-quality docking of the development strategies of both sides, actively implement the global development initiative, deepen the coordination of global governance policies, and innovate development opportunities with the digital economy and new infrastructure as the starting point. The two countries can strengthen cooperation in financial science and technology, intelligent manufacturing, digital infrastructure and other fields, especially through enabling the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries to promote new industries, new formats and new models. The two sides should also consolidate the role of economic and trade cooperation as a ballast, and strengthen bilateral cooperation in green development, space science and technology innovation, education and university cooperation, agricultural geosciences, public media and medicine and other fields.

Over the past 10 years, China Arab economic and trade exchanges have been generally stable, but from the perspective of the share of bilateral trade in China Arab foreign trade, there is still much room for development. In order to promote the high-quality economic development of the two countries, the Deputy Director of the Institute of American Studies of the Trade Research Institute of the Ministry of Commerce proposed that China and Argentina give full play to their respective advantages in resource factors and promote the establishment of a bilateral intergovernmental economic and trade cooperation mechanism; Promote innovative development, encourage the development of emerging trade models including cross-border e-commerce, create a favorable environment for innovative development of enterprises through institutional arrangements such as free trade pilot zones and import demonstration zones, and enhance the power of sustainable economic development; Promote the integrated development of manufacturing and service industries, strengthen the deep connection between trade and investment, promote the development of international trade through investment activities, and reduce the cost of investment through trade activities. "Argentina can also consider applying to join the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (RCEP) to form a stronger integration advantage."

The dialogue was co sponsored by the Institute of Contemporary China and the World under the Chinese Foreign Language and Culture Administration, the School of Social Sciences of Buenos Aires University in Argentina, and the Argentine Research Center of the Latin American Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. More than 10 think tank experts and scholars from China and Argentina participated in the discussion.