on november 4, the first seminar to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between china and peru, “china and peru: creating a common future” was held. it was jointly organized by tsinghua university and pontificia universidad católica del perú. the two-day event focused on the topics "china and peru-past, present and future" and "actions to take together：toward climate change". more than 380 government authorities, experts, scholars, business and student representatives from china, peru and other latin american countries participated in the first day of the event.
yang bin, vice-president and provost of tsinghua university, carlos garatea, president of pontificia universidad católica del perú (abbreviated as pucp), liang yu, ambassador of china to peru and luis quesada, ambassador of peru to china attended the opening ceremony and delivered speeches. li jinliang, dean of the office of international affairs of tsinghua university, and eduardo dargent, director of the academic office of institutional affairs of pucp, delivered closing remarks. the event was co-moderated by chen taotao, director of the tsinghua latin american center, ruben tang, adviser of the office of the vice president for research of pucp, and sebastien adins, a professor of social sciences at pucp.
yang talked about the relationship between tsinghua and pucp. he mentioned that this year marks not only the 50th anniversary of the establishment of relations between china and peru, but also the 200th anniversary of peru's independence, the 100th anniversary of the founding of the communist party of china and the 110th anniversary of tsinghua university. over the past 50 years, thanks to close cooperation of both countries, communication in the fields of economics, culture and education has been flourishing and bilateral relations have been heating up. at this important historical moment, the universities jointly organized the event to discuss how to promote a stable long-term cooperative relationship. yang said tsinghua university is willing to work with peruvian universities to build a learning platform for young people and open up new prospects for education. tsinghua university will continue to make efforts to build an integrated platform for chinese and peruvian academia, which will strengthen in-depth exchanges and open up a broader space for expanding educational cooperation between the two countries.
garatea said the pontificia universidad católica del perú and tsinghua university have maintained a long-term cooperative relationship. although we are far away, our hearts are closely connected, he said. he said he hopes both sides can work together long-term and looks forward to more communication between teachers and students after the epidemic in order to open a broader platform for young students of both countries through contact between universities, jointly build cooperation between the two universities and further promote the long-standing and well-established friendship between china and peru.
liang said that looking back on the relationship between china and peru from the perspective of history, it is hard to find two countries and two ethnic groups like china and peru. we have a long history and profound traditional friendship, despite being separated by vast oceans, he said. he pointed out that since the establishment of diplomatic relations 50 years ago, china-peru relations have seen great development. political mutual trust between the two sides has been deepened, cooperation in various fields has yielded fruitful results, and social and public opinion regarding china-peru relations has been continuously consolidated. especially since the outbreak of covid-19, the governments and peoples of both countries have joined hands to fight against it. liang emphasized that standing at a new historical starting point, the development of china-peru relations is facing unprecedented broad prospects, which will surely bring about more brilliant results and become a model for building a new type of international relations and a community with a shared future for mankind.
quesada said bilateral relations have rapidly strengthened in recent years and are in their best period. the two themes of the seminar were very meaningful, he added. at the first session, with the theme "china and peru: past, present, and future", he mentioned that more than 100,000 chinese came to peru 400 years ago, and today peru has the second-largest chinese community on the american continent. the second session focused on climate change, which is an area of great concern for the two countries. peru is one of the countries that is most vulnerable to climate change for its unique geography and ecosystem, so peru hopes to develop clean and sustainable infrastructure. it believes that fulfilling the commitments in the paris agreement is essential, while funding and technology are important elements to achieve the goals set by the country.
during the keynote speech session, cai wei, director-general of the department of latin american and caribbean affairs, ministry of foreign affairs of china said that president xi jinping and president pedro castillo recently exchanged congratulatory messages to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between both countries. china-peru relations have achieved great progress and have always been in the “first phalanx” of china-latin america relations, cai added. this year, the governments and universities of the two countries held a series of celebration activities, which were a vivid reflection of the friendship between the two ancient civilizations.
for future development, cai said that under the strategic guidance of the "global development initiative", the two sides could strengthen the alignment of their development strategies, jointly build the "belt and road" with high quality, complete free trade agreement upgrade negotiations as soon as possible, restart their economic cooperation strategy, further deepen economic and trade investment cooperation in the fields of agriculture, energy and mining, infrastructure, 5g, and digital economy, achieve stable economic recovery and sustainable development, and engage in more practical and fruitful cooperation.
luis tsuboyama, director general for economic affairs of the ministry of foreign affairs of peru, talked about the development of economic and trade relations between peru and china and current cooperation projects from the aspects of the free trade agreement, china's investment in peru, and the bilateral economic cooperation dialogue mechanism. in the future, he said economic and trade relations between peru and china will be deepened further, and he expects that the optimized free trade agreement will further promote the development of bilateral relations.
chen taotao, director of the latin american center of tsinghua university, delivered a keynote speech on the topic building consensus and exploring a path for win-win investment between china and peru. she shared data on china's opening up to peru, attracting foreign investment and chinese companies' investment in peru, analyzed the characteristics of china's opening up to peru and chinese enterprises' investment in peru, and proposed jointly exploring a path to win-win investment.
dr. alan fairlie, a professor of economics at the faculty of social sciences, pucp, dr. rosario santa gadea, director of the center for china and asia-pacific studies, universidad del pacífico, carlos herrera, former executive director of proinversion,tao fenghua, general manager of icbc peru bank and president of the association of chinese companies in peru and dr. fabián novak, deputy director of the institute of international studies pucp talked about the development of china-peru relations from the aspects of economics, trade, investment cooperation, and political relations between the two countries.
li ziying, deputy dean of the advanced institute of regional and global governance at beijing foreign studies university and deputy dean of the spanish portuguese language institute, and xu shicheng, a researcher at the institute of latin american studies of the chinese academy of social sciences, talked about the development of relations between china and peru from the perspective of cultural exchanges.
at the end of the meeting, li jinliang, dean of the office of international affairs of tsinghua university, said that all of the guests reviewed the half-century of china-peru cooperation from different perspectives, directions and levels, which is the best expression of the long-standing and deepening friendly exchanges between the two countries. li said that in the future, tsinghua university will continue working with local partners in peru and latin america to build an integrated platform of politics, business and learning, and promote communication and exchanges among friendly people from all walks of life. he hopes that the cooperation between tsinghua and the pucp can provide strong innovation momentum and high-quality talent for the development of china-peru relations.
eduardo dargent thanked the distinguished guests for their active participation.
editor: li han
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