Argentine ambassador calls China 'great partner'

BUENOS AIRES - Argentine Ambassador to China Diego Guelar on Wednesday hailed the Asian country as "a great partner."

China is "the great engine of the world. In the last decade, China has become the main trading partner of the most important countries. It is a global phenomenon," said the diplomat.

In an interview with Argentine radio El Mundo, Guelar said: "Beijing has met the conditions of the World Trade Organization and must be considered as a market economy" as the private sector is key to China's economic growth, generating about 60 percent of its GDP.

Hailing the importance of the upcoming G20 Summit on Sept 4-5 in China's eastern city of Hangzhou, Guelar said the summit would group countries that account for "85 percent of global GDP and 65 percent of global population."

He added that President Mauricio Macri is planning a visit to China in March or April 2017.

During an interview with Xinhua last week, Macri said the upcoming G20 summit will provide an opportunity to review cooperation between Argentina and China, lauding China's "enormous importance" and "complementarity" to his country.

The two countries have complementary capacities for cooperation in fields like food security, energy and infrastructure construction, said Macri.

"We really value Chinese companies' capacity to build infrastructure and hope they value our capacity to produce food, to be able to increase the flow of exports to balance things out. That's our goal for the next few years," he added.