Chile - a "gateway country"

During Premier Li Keqiang's visit to Santiago in May, Chilean President, Michelle Bachelet, called Chile "a gateway country... a constructive bridge with our neighbours," highlighting the country's membership in the Pacific Alliance and an associate member of Mercosur.

"Chile has been in forefront of the regional relations with China from the very beginning, from the establishing of diplomatic relations to the signing of the Free Trade agreement (FTA) in 2005," said Ambassador Heine.

"One concern we have, that it is a very high quality of trade and it has been accompanied with a high quality of investment, relatively little Chinese investment in Chile. I would like to change that," stresses Ambassador Heine. "This very thriving trade relationship that we have, worth 34 bn USD last year, needs to be strengthened by other areas."

The new and "old" areas of cooperation

The Ambassador Heine sees the Chilean and Chinese economy as complementary. "The two areas where we are keen to have more of Chinese present are construction and energy, where the Chinese have comparative advantages," said Ambassador Heine. "China now plays the leading role in the development of solar energy in the world. Much of it was developed in the Gobi desert. We have Atacama Desert which has more solar intensity than Gobi, also a lot of space to put all these panels."

Speaking of trade, trade between Chile and China was more than 34 billion U.S. dollars in 2014, or 23 percent of Chile's total foreign trade. "We understand the Chinese consumers have new demands and we would like to understand those demands, we want to respond to those demands," said Ambassador Heine.

Chile is the second largest exporter of vine to China, the second largest exporter of fresh fruit to China, the country exports salmon, sea products and meat. Chile is now looking into diversifying its food basket to China, including bringing live cattle to China. According to J.Heine during this year Chile has already exported 14 thousand heads of cows to China with another 5 thousand are on the way. He added that Chile is now the world's 16th largest food exporters and plans to be among the top ten in the next five years.

Following Premier Li's visit to Santiago in May, 18 agreements have been signed between the Chilean and Chinese government, the most important being a double taxation avoidance agreement (DTA), updated Free Trade Agreement, agreement on setting up an RMB clearing centre in Chile and the extradition treaty. The others cover fields such as trade, finance, public infrastructure facilities construction, energy, industrial capacity cooperation, astronomy and cultural exchanges.

Chile will host the next China-Community of Latin American and Caribbean States Forum in 2018.

(The author is working in the Russian Service of China Radio International.)

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