Part of Char­lotte Street, in Port-of-Spain will of­fi­cial­ly be des­ig­nat­ed as Chi­na­town when icon­ic arch­ways are built by the Shang­hai Con­struc­tion Group.

The an­nounce­ment was made last Mon­day by may­or Joel Mar­tinez dur­ing a re­cep­tion to wel­come a vis­it­ing high lev­el del­e­ga­tion from Shang­hai at the Hy­att Re­gency.

Mar­tinez said the arch­es would be lo­cat­ed at Park and Char­lotte streets and In­de­pen­dence Square and Char­lotte Street.

The ini­tia­tive, Mar­tinez said, is one of the on-go­ing projects dis­cussed as part of a planned twin­ning be­tween the city of Port-of-Spain and the city of Shang­hai.

He said, “Our twin­ning will cre­ate an ide­al en­vi­ron­ment which will de­vel­op new co­op­er­a­tion tech­niques, ex­change of ex­pe­ri­ences as well as joint re­flec­tions on spe­cif­ic is­sues that will find so­lu­tions and bring im­prove­ments.”

The co­op­er­a­tion be­tween the two cities is part of the Belt and Road Ini­tia­tive an­nounced by Chi­nese Pres­i­dent Xi Jin­ping in 2013.

It is a cre­ative co­op­er­a­tion mod­el that aims to bet­ter deal with the eco­nom­ic and so­cial dif­fi­cul­ties cur­rent­ly be­ing faced world­wide.

At the event, Chi­nese Am­bas­sador to T&T Song Yu­min said, “With a fur­ther man­date from the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment, now Shang­hai Mu­nic­i­pal­i­ty will pri­ori­tise its cor­po­ra­tion with Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

He ex­pects the two coun­tries to make great strides as the part­ner­ship con­tin­ues to be built with re­newed vigour.

Deputy Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of Shang­hai Mu­nic­i­pal Peo­ple’s Gov­ern­ment Huang Rong said with joint co­op­er­a­tion in var­i­ous fields be­tween the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion and Shang­hai, T&T would be a bright pearl in the Caribbean.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, who al­so at­tend­ed the event, said the ini­tia­tive is one of the pil­lars that form part of the bridge be­tween this coun­try and Chi­na.