China helps partners upgrade economies

Premier Li Keqiang signed 67 cooperation agreements worth more than $100 billion during his nine-day visit to Brazil, Colombia, Peru and Chile. Also, for the first time he proposed a "3-x-3" model of industrial cooperation between China and Latin America, which would focus on logistics, power and telecommunications, help establish healthy interactions among enterprises, governments and societies, and expand the three channels of funds, credit and insurance.

In this sense, the "3-x-3" model marks the transformation of China's cooperation in the face of its "new economic normal" of slow but stable growth and overcapacity in some manufacturing sectors.

Last year, China's GDP crossed $10 trillion, and the country became a capital exporter for the first time since it started attracting foreign investments on a large scale in the late 1970s. China is the largest trade partner of more than 120 countries and regions, but its economic growth slowed to about 7 percent last year, the lowest since the early 1990s. Given these facts, the model proposed by Li will help realize win-win cooperation, maximize compatibility between China and its trade partners and minimize the negative impact on domestic as well as global economic growth.

President Xi Jinping pledged at the Boao Asian Forum in Hainan province in March that China would import goods worth more than $10 trillion, invest over $500 billion in overseas markets and account for about 500 million passenger trips abroad by 2020.

Li, on his part, has asked local Chinese government officials to attach more importance to economic restructuring than the pursuit of economic growth. His new overseas cooperation model too reflects his emphasis on making good use of China's strengths to help its trade partners upgrade their economies and industries.

For Latin America, China is no longer the "world's workshop" but a combination of a powerful manufacturer, a huge consumers' market and a big investor. Besides, Latin America's economic growth last year was only 1.3 percent according to the International Monetary Fund, about one-third the rate of three years ago.