On October 21, the 20th session of China-Uruguay Joint Trade and Economic Committee was held via video conference. Wang Shouwen, Vice Minister of Commerce and Deputy China International Trade Representative and Deputy Foreign Minister Carolina Ache of Uruguay co-chaired the meeting, attended by Wang Gang, Chinese Ambassador to Uruguay and Fernando Lugris, Uruguayan Ambassador to China.

The two sides had extensive and in-depth exchange of views on such issues as fighting the virus together, expanding trade and investment, strengthening FTA dialogue and deepening multilateral cooperation. The two sides agreed to go all out to implement the important consensus reached by two heads of state, deepen cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative, maintain unimpeded trade and supply and industrial chains, foster enabling investment climate, expand cooperation on agriculture, forestry, husbandry, fishery, tourism, services trade, e-commerce and others, enhance economic and technological cooperation and jointly safeguard free trade and the multilateral trading system.

Wang Shouwen said that as pointed out by President Xi Jinping in his phone talks with Uruguayan President Luis Lacalle Pou, Uruguay is China’s trustworthy friend in Latin America, and the two countries have always been supportive of each other with mutual understanding. This session of the JETC is the first of its kind that China held with South American countries after the outbreak of COVID-19, thus sending a positive signal of overcoming the difficulties through solidarity and cooperation. China’s economy remains on a long-term upward trajectory. China boasts an enormous market. A new development paradigm with domestic circulation as the mainstay and domestic and international circulations reinforcing each other is in the making. China is pushing for a new round of high-quality opening up. Given the high economic complementarity, China-Uruguay cooperation builds on good basis and has enormous potential. China is willing to further expand trade and investment with Uruguay, promote cooperation on FTA and actively foster new growth drivers including digital economy and services trade so as to continuously scale new heights in bilateral trade and economic relations.

Ache said that the bilateral relations between China and Uruguay are of strategic significance for Uruguay. Since the pandemic broke out, Uruguay and China have communicated with and helped each other via various channels on many issues, which again demonstrates the deep friendship between the two peoples. Uruguay hopes to make the most of the JETC mechanism to map out cooperation plans for the next stage with China, keep unleashing the potential of bilateral business cooperation, export more high value-added agricultural, animal and fishery products to China, attract more Chinese investment, strengthen coordination and communication under multilateral frameworks and promote practical cooperation to a higher level. Uruguay is ready to continue to play a positive role in cooperation between China and Mercosur.