中文
MEXICO CITY, Dec. 29 (Xinhua) -- China-Latin America ties saw fruitful results in 2019 and the relationship boasts brighter future thanks to the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), experts have said.
Speaking to Xinhua, scholars in the region believed that the BRI is generating a lot of interest in a region that has traditionally lacked the infrastructure to promote development.
"China is expected to participate much more actively in the region's economic transformation," said Juan Angel Cordero, a Cuban expert in international relations, adding that China's cooperation with Latin American countries will be multidirectional.
Colombian economist and journalist Enrique Posada said he expected the BRI to have a positive impact on ties between China and Latin America in the next decade.
"I see the Belt and Road Initiative as a wide-reaching megaproject," Posada said.
Proposed in 2013, the BRI aims to build trade and infrastructure networks connecting Asia with Europe and Africa on and beyond the ancient Silk Road routes. It comprises the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road.
So far, the BRI has become a platform of opportunities and a road to prosperity for all its participants. China has signed cooperation agreements with more than 160 countries and international organizations.
"Latin America is the natural extension of the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road," Posada added.
Guillermo Holzmann, a political analyst and professor at the University of Chile and the Adolfo Ibanez University, believed that ties between China and Latin America can lead to concrete win-win cooperation.
China is seeking cooperation "without intervening in the internal politics of other countries," Holzmann said.
Calling China "without a doubt the engine of the global economy," Brazilian economist Elias Jabbour said that China has the economic and financial conditions to bring prosperity to Latin America.
