Shu Jueting, spokesperson from China's Ministry of Commerce

Trade between China and Latin America has fully recovered and exceeded pre-pandemic levels, Shu Jueting, the spokesperson from the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) said on Thursday, highlighting that economic and trade cooperation is the "ballast and stabilizer" of the relationship between China and Latin American countries.

Shu said that the economies of China and Latin America are highly complementary and there is a huge potential for cooperation, as the Latin American region is a natural extension of the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, and that 21 countries have signed cooperation of Belt and Road Initiative with China, Shu said. 

China-Latin America economic and trade cooperation has overcome the adverse impact of the pandemic, showing strong resilience and development momentum, and has now fully recovered and exceeded pre-pandemic levels, Shu added. 

Regarding trade relations between China and Cuba, Shu said that Cuba is the first Latin American and Caribbean country in the Western Hemisphere that set up diplomatic relations with China. China is Cuba's largest trading partner in goods, and Cuba is China's second largest trading partner in the Caribbean region. 

The two sides have engaged in extensive cooperation in fields such as agriculture, renewable energy, biomedicine, information and communication, tourism, and infrastructure.

The bilateral trade volume between China and Cuba increased by 7.2 percent in 2021, data from MOFCOM showed. The bilateral trade continued to grow in the first three quarters of this year, and China's imports from Cuba even achieved an increase of 18.1 percent, MOFCOM said. 

First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez is set to pay a state visit to China from Thursday to Saturday, according to China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Global Times