Lee An­na Ma­haraj

leean­na.ma­haraj@guardian.co.tt

The As­sis­tant For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple’s Re­pub­lic of Chi­na, Hua Chun­y­ing, has crit­i­cised the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca for its treat­ment of Chi­na. Speak­ing at a meet and greet host­ed at the Na­tion­al Li­brary and In­for­ma­tion Sys­tem Au­thor­i­ty (NALIS) yes­ter­day, she re­ferred to the US’ “bul­ly­ing” tac­tics when asked about the two coun­tries’ re­la­tion­ship.

She said al­though the US called Chi­na its geopo­lit­i­cal com­peti­tor, they do not have an equal foot­ing, be­cause they are con­stant­ly try­ing to bring them down. Chun­y­ing made an anal­o­gy about the two coun­tries run­ning a race in the Olympics.

“In­stead of fo­cus­ing on how to give the best per­for­mance or how to cre­ate or break his own record, he al­ways tries to trip or even break the legs of his com­peti­tor. Can you still call that a com­pe­ti­tion? No, it’s not a com­pe­ti­tion, it’s bul­ly­ing, right? This is the sit­u­a­tion we are fac­ing with the Unit­ed States, and we all know that the Unit­ed States is al­so lob­by­ing and ly­ing with its few al­lies to lim­it, ban, to cut cheap ex­ports to Chi­na, be­cause he’s afraid Chi­na may take ad­van­tage, to catch up in the sci­ence and tech­no­log­i­cal de­vel­op­ments,” Chun­y­ing said.

She went fur­ther to say that the US is spread­ing false in­for­ma­tion on Chi­na.

“In or­der to sup­press Chi­na, there is mis­in­for­ma­tion and many ter­ri­ble lies about Chi­na, many ac­cu­sa­tions and blam­ing for the sake of the po­lit­i­cal gains and self­ish gains with­in the Unit­ed States, and Chi­na be­came an easy scape­goat and sac­ri­fice be­cause of the po­lit­i­cal games with­in the Unit­ed States,” she said.

She said Chi­na re­spects Amer­i­ca and does not plan to chal­lenge or re­place them.

“We re­al­ly have no in­ten­tion at all to be­come an­oth­er Unit­ed States, be­cause there are a lot of things we ad­mire about the Unit­ed States, mean­while there are some oth­er things we do not ad­mire about the Unit­ed States at all be­cause as you all know every year there are so many peo­ple dy­ing over gun vi­o­lence and drugs, this is not al­lowed in Chi­na,” Chun­y­ing said.

Chun­y­ing added that Chi­na is ready to work with Trinidad and To­ba­go and oth­er de­vel­op­ing coun­tries.

She in­vit­ed Cari­com coun­tries and T&T to par­tic­i­pate in the 6th Chi­na In­ter­na­tion­al Im­port Ex­po which will be held in Shang­hai from No­vem­ber 5 to No­vem­ber 10, 2023.

“We would be most hap­py to pro­vide you with pol­i­cy fa­cil­i­ta­tions and sup­port for your par­tic­i­pa­tion, for ex­am­ple, free booths in the coun­try pavil­ion, free dec­o­ra­tions, free ship­ping, and free ac­com­mo­da­tion in Shang­hai. We hope this will not on­ly help in­crease the pop­u­lar­i­ty and vis­i­bil­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go, and the Caribbean as a whole but al­so help bring qual­i­ty prod­ucts from Caribbean coun­tries to more Chi­nese fam­i­lies,” she said.

She added that there are over 700 stu­dents from the Caribbean study­ing in Chi­na, and the coun­try wel­comes them as they be­lieve they will be­come good­will am­bas­sadors be­tween Chi­na and T&T.

Chun­y­ing not­ed that five years af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s vis­it, both coun­tries are still ben­e­fit­ing from the mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing be­tween Evolv­ing Tech­nolo­gies and En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (eTecK) and Bei­jing Con­struc­tion and En­gi­neer­ing Group.

“The flag­ship project is Phoenix Park In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, it has been im­ple­ment­ed smooth­ly, and very soon we are see­ing it put to use, and we have seen the con­struc­tion projects, in­clud­ing a new ter­mi­nal build­ing for the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in To­ba­go and the Diego Mar­tin ve­hi­cle over­pass are now al­so well un­der­way. All these played an im­por­tant role in ad­vanc­ing eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, strength­en­ing col­lec­tiv­i­ty, and cre­at­ing more jobs here, and has be­come a shin­ing ex­am­ple of co­op­er­a­tion,” she said.

Mem­bers from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ Con­fu­cius In­sti­tute were present, as well as schol­ar­ship win­ners and rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion. Min­is­ter Chun­y­ing gift­ed some books to the Chi­nese sec­tion at NALIS.