Your editorial (newspaper’s View, April 10), misinterprets China’s stance on co-operation with Latin America, smears China’s collaboration with Argentina on its deep space station and with regional countries on Covid vaccines, incites confrontation between China and the US, and attempts to sow discord between China and Latin America. This article, which goes against basic facts and seriously misleads readers, is unacceptable.
Cooperation between China and Latin American countries is mutually beneficial in nature. Both sides are developing countries facing common tasks in the same stage of development. Their collaboration follows the principles of equality, mutual benefit, openness and inclusiveness, and serves the shared interests and mutual needs of the two sides. It is also an integral part of south-south co-operation.
China is a major buyer of Latin American commodities, and is importing increasingly more agricultural and high value-added products from the region. China-Latin America cooperation in infrastructure has played a positive role in the latter’s effort to break development bottlenecks and improve people's livelihood. Investment and financial cooperation between the two sides has been conducted in full compliance with business rules and local laws and regulations. Latin American countries and peoples can tell better than anyone else whether their cooperation with China is good or not.
Regarding the Neuquén deep space station in Argentina, China and Argentina have repeatedly stated the truth, that the facility is a bilateral space technology co-operation project only for civilian use, and its operation is open and transparent. On the anti-Covid co-operation between the two sides, China provided more than 300mn doses of vaccines and nearly 40mn items of relief materials to Latin America during the pandemic, helping build a solid line of health defence for the region.
It should be pointed out that the development of China-Latin America relations does not target or exclude any third party, nor does it affect the interests of any third party in the region. China has always believed that Latin America is not an arena where various forces compete and fight. We respect the right of regional countries in pursuing development paths that suit their own realities independently. Building a China-Latin America community with a shared future only serves the shared interest of the two sides, but also contributes to world peace, stability and prosperity.
In total disregard of the vibrant, mutually beneficial co-operation between China and Latin America, Western media, including the FT, are discrediting the collaboration and fabricating and hyping up the “China threat theory”. The root cause behind it is the outdated mentality of “zero-sum game”. Such act cannot in any way change the overall trend of China-Latin America co-operation which will continue to deepen and become more solid.
We urge this newspaper to abandon your ideological prejudice, stop inciting confrontation, stop making irresponsible remarks, and view China's development and China-Latin America cooperation in an objective, rational, fairly and just manner.
