Argentina and China well positioned to build on stable foundation of cooperative relations: China Daily editorial

That Javier Milei on his second day in office as president of Argentina met with Chinese President Xi Jinping's Special Envoy and Vice-Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress Wu Weihua shows the great importance that the new leader of the second-largest economy in South America attaches to developing good relations with China.

President Xi conveyed his congratulations to Milei, shortly after the latter secured his election victory last month, demonstrating that it is the sincere wish of Beijing to continue the friendly and productive cooperative relations that have been forged between the two countries.

During their meeting on Monday, Wu extended President Xi's warm congratulations and best wishes to Milei, who in turn asked Wu to extend his sincere greetings and best wishes to President Xi and the Chinese people.

As predicted, unlike his China-related discourse in the election, Milei stressed that his government attaches high attention to the country's relations with China.

Milei said that Buenos Aires will continue to firmly uphold the one-China principle and stands ready to further promote in-depth exchanges and cooperation between the two countries in various fields including the economy and trade and cultural and people-to-people exchanges. 

That statement accords with the interests of the two nations as well as the rest of the world, particularly the emerging market economies. But it will have disappointed some in the West, who were hopeful of Milei breaking ties with Beijing as he once said in his election campaign.

Relations between China and Argentina have shown sound growth momentum in recent years, and the economic complementarity between the two countries means there is still great cooperation potential to be tapped.

China has made it clear that it is ready to work with Argentina to enhance the synergy of their development strategies and promote the sustained and stable development of bilateral relations.

It is supportive of Argentina's efforts to maintain economic and financial stability, and is ready to share its development opportunities with Argentina, and deepen practical bilateral cooperation in agriculture, infrastructure and other areas. It has stated that it would like to import more high-quality Argentine products and encourage more Chinese enterprises to invest in Argentina, which would be much-needed shots in the arm for the Argentine economy.

As both China and Argentina are important developing countries, strengthening their coordination on international affairs would also boost the influence of the Global South in the international governance system.

China is ready to work with Argentina in such multilateral platforms as the G20 and the BRICS grouping, which Argentina is due to join as a new member in January, to further promote their common interests and give their cooperation more global significance.