In 2019, T&T be­came the first Cari­com coun­try whose trade with Chi­na ex­ceed­ed US$1 bil­lion, says Chines Am­bas­sador Fang Qiu.

He made the re­marks at a re­cep­tion which took place last week to cel­e­brate the tenth an­niver­sary of the in­cep­tion of the Belt and Road Ini­tia­tive (BRI) and the fifth an­niver­sary of Chi­na-T&T BRI co­op­er­a­tion.

“By 2022, our bi­lat­er­al trade vol­ume sur­passed US$1.31 bil­lion, more than dou­bled the val­ue be­fore join­ing the BRI,” Qiu added.

In 2018, this coun­try be­came the first Caribbean coun­try to sign on­to the BRI, pro­pelling T&T’s prac­ti­cal co­op­er­a­tion in var­i­ous fields to a new stage.

As re­la­tions con­tin­ue to strength­en, lo­cal en­ter­pris­es have al­so par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Chi­na In­ter­na­tion­al Im­port Ex­po for two years in a row, bring­ing more and more spe­cial­i­ty prod­ucts such as rum and choco­late to Chi­nese con­sumers.

“I’m hap­py to be in­formed that T&T Fine Co­coa Com­pa­ny is co­op­er­at­ing with a choco­late pro­duc­er in Hainan Chi­na, and tonnes of fine co­coa prod­ucts will be ex­port­ed to Chi­na soon. Now the two coun­tries are co­or­di­nat­ing close­ly in the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre project to con­tribute to the so­cial se­cu­ri­ty of T&T,” Qiu stat­ed.

The BRI has al­so served as in­cen­tive for clos­er peo­ple-to-peo­ple and cul­tur­al ex­changes be­tween Chi­na and this coun­try.

In this vein, the am­bas­sador said the sign­ing of the Let­ter of In­tent on the twin­ning of Shang­hai and Port-of-Spain marked a great leap for­ward in the friend­ly ex­changes and co­op­er­a­tion be­tween the two cities and by ex­ten­sion the two coun­tries.

“Chi­na has made con­tin­u­ous ef­forts to pro­vide hu­man re­source train­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties to the Trinidad and To­ba­go side. So far, near­ly 500 par­tic­i­pants from T&T, in­clud­ing 63 this year, have at­tend­ed var­i­ous train­ing pro­grammes of­fered by Chi­na. Our two sides have al­so car­ried out fruit­ful co­op­er­a­tion in the fields of agri­cul­ture, med­i­cine and health, dis­as­ter pre­ven­tion and mit­i­ga­tion and green de­vel­op­ment, which have fur­ther en­hanced our tra­di­tion­al friend­ship and brought the two peo­ples clos­er on the road of pur­su­ing a hap­py life,” the Am­bas­sador added.

He not­ed that over the past five years, Chi­na-T&T BRI co­op­er­a­tion has led to an all-round de­vel­op­ment of prac­ti­cal co­op­er­a­tion be­tween the two coun­tries.

He cit­ed that the Phoenix Park In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, the first BRI flag­ship project in the Caribbean re­gion, which has been com­plet­ed and will soon be put in­to op­er­a­tion.

Pow­ered by the cut­ting-edge tech­nolo­gies of 5G, AI, big da­ta and In­ter­net of Things, this state-of-the-art in­dus­tri­al es­tate will host com­pa­nies in the ar­eas of light and ad­vanced man­u­fac­tur­ing, as­sem­bly, lo­gis­tics and dis­tri­b­u­tion and ICT in­dus­tries, and ad­vance the re­al­i­sa­tion of the eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion strat­e­gy of T&T.

Now, ac­cord­ing to Qiu, Chi­na has em­barked on a new jour­ney to­ward build­ing a mod­ern so­cial­ist coun­try in all re­spects, and will ad­vance the re­ju­ve­na­tion of the Chi­nese na­tion on all fronts through a Chi­nese path to mod­erni­sa­tion.

He added that Chi­na’s new jour­ney will not on­ly rein­vig­o­rate its own new de­vel­op­ment, but al­so cre­ate fresh op­por­tu­ni­ties for the world.

The am­bas­sador re­it­er­at­ed that Chi­na will con­tin­ue to pro­mote high-stan­dard open­ing up and the ef­fec­tive in­te­gra­tion of do­mes­tic and in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets and re­sources, and pro­vide more mar­ket, in­vest­ment and growth op­por­tu­ni­ties for its Belt and Road part­ners, in­clud­ing T&T.

Speak­ing on a larg­er scale, Qiu not­ed that the BRI of­fers a path of sol­i­dar­i­ty for glob­al part­ner­ships, stat­ing that it is a glob­al pub­lic good that prac­tices true mul­ti­lat­er­al­ism, where every­one can dis­cuss to­geth­er, build to­geth­er, and share to­geth­er.

“So far, a to­tal of 152 coun­tries and 32 in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions have signed more than 200 co­op­er­a­tion doc­u­ments with Chi­na un­der the frame­work of the ini­tia­tive. Chi­na has held two Belt and Road Fo­rums for in­ter­na­tion­al co­op­er­a­tion, where over 20 co­op­er­a­tion plat­forms were launched in fields such as en­er­gy, port, rail­way, green de­vel­op­ment, and dig­i­tal econ­o­my. Lat­er this year, the third Belt and Road Fo­rum for in­ter­na­tion­al co­op­er­a­tion will be held,” Qiu added.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the BRI of­fers a path to win-win co­op­er­a­tion on con­nec­tiv­i­ty.

“A gen­er­al con­nec­tiv­i­ty frame­work con­sist­ing of six cor­ri­dors, six con­nec­tiv­i­ty routes and mul­ti­ple coun­tries and ports has been put in place,” the Am­bas­sador said.

He not­ed that land­mark ac­com­plish­ments in­clude the Mom­basa-Nairo­bi Stan­dard Gauge Rail­way in East Africa, Chi­na-Laos Rail­way in Asia, the new Haifa port in Is­rael, the Chi­na-Pak­istan Eco­nom­ic Cor­ri­dor, among oth­ers.

Qiu al­so cit­ed that Chi­na-Eu­rope freight trains, for ex­am­ple, have made 10,000 trips so far this year, car­ry­ing more than 1.08 mil­lion 20-foot equiv­a­lent unit (TEU) con­tain­ers of goods, up 27 per cent.

He said in to­tal, the ini­tia­tive has gen­er­at­ed near­ly US$1 tril­lion of in­vest­ment and formed more than 3,000 co­op­er­a­tion projects, adding that Chi­na’s trade in goods with BRI coun­tries dou­bled from US $1.04 tril­lion in 2013 to US$2.07 tril­lion in 2022, with an av­er­age an­nu­al growth rate of eight per cent.

More­so, Qiu said the BRI of­fers a path of hope for glob­al sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment.

“The ini­tia­tive has al­ways been de­vel­op­ment-ori­ent­ed, and con­sis­tent ef­forts have been made to en­sure it is high-stan­dard, sus­tain­able and peo­ple-cen­tred. The ini­tia­tive has cre­at­ed 420,000 jobs for coun­tries along the Belt and Road, and lift­ed near­ly 40 mil­lion peo­ple out of pover­ty. A se­ries of mi­cro but sub­stan­tial projects aimed at im­proved health and ed­u­ca­tion, and ac­cess to sports, among oth­ers, have pro­duced fruit­ful re­sults,” he not­ed.

Dr An­ni­ta Montoute, in­ter­im di­rec­tor of the In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions, who al­so de­liv­ered re­marks, not­ed that the BRI rep­re­sents a new ap­proach to de­vel­op­ment co­op­er­a­tion for the Caribbean and dis­tin­guish­es it­self from tra­di­tion­al trade and in­vest­ments agree­ments which have an over­ar­ch­ing “one size fits all neo lib­er­al frame­work”.

Fur­ther, she added that the BRI dis­plays a more flex­i­ble and open na­ture which pro­vides a mech­a­nism by which Caribbean coun­tries can have more space and ex­er­cise greater lever­age in ne­go­ti­at­ing ini­tia­tives on terms to ac­com­mo­date their spe­cif­ic needs.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Montoute said the BRI projects car­ry the po­ten­tial to meet a va­ri­ety of de­vel­op­ment needs of par­tic­i­pat­ing coun­tries, not­ing that Caribbean coun­tries stand to ben­e­fit from the Belt and Road Ini­tia­tive through strate­gi­cal­ly con­cep­tu­alised projects aimed at re­duc­ing the high debt bur­dens which plague Caribbean states and man­ag­ing co­or­di­na­tion in their en­gage­ment with Chi­na through the BIR.