china confidential
Sunday, November 16, 2008
China Issues First White Paper on Latin America
China's first white paper on Latin America includes sections on political, economic and military issues.
Xinhua News Agency released the full text of the paper on November 5, just 10 days before Chinese President Hu Jintao's planned trip to the U.S. to attend the G-20 summit on the financial crisis.
Following the summit, Hu will conduct state visits to Cuba, Costa Rica and Peru. Hu also will attend the 16th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting from Nov. 22-23 in Lima, Peru.
Regarding defense and security, the white paper looks at three issues: military exchanges and cooperation, cooperation on judicial and police affairs, and nontraditional security issues.
The paper said it would continue to "actively carry out military exchanges and defense dialogue and cooperation with Latin American and Caribbean countries," including mutual visits by defense and military officials. Personnel exchanges also would be increased. Exchanges will include military training, personnel training and peacekeeping.
Regarding judicial and police issues, intelligence and technological exchanges will be strengthened, "with bilateral and multilateral exchange mechanisms put in place." Non-traditional security issues will include exchanges and cooperation on "combating terrorism, so as to jointly improve the capacity to respond to nontraditional security threats."
China has agreed to sell arms to Venezuela, whose leader, President Hugo Chávez, made his fifth visit to China in late September to make oil and arms deals.
During the visit, Chávez described himself as a "Maoist" and signed an agreement to procure 24 Hongdu K-8 trainers in 2009. There have been some discussions to procure Chinese-made Harbin Z-9 helicopters and Chengdu J-10 and FC-1 fighters.
Monday, 17 November 2008
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