First Ministerial Meeting of the CELAC-China Forum – Beijing, January 8-9, 2015

The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Brazil, Ambassador Mauro Vieira, will attend the First Ministerial Meeting of the CELAC-China Forum in Beijing on January 8-9. It will be the first participation of Minister Mauro Vieira in a multilateral meeting as Minister of Foreign Affairs.

The CELAC-China Forum was launched, symbolically, at the Brasilia Summit of leaders from China and Latin America and the Caribbean countries, held on July 17, 2014. The creation of the CELAC-China Forum was born of a Chinese proposal to the region, accepted by Latin American and Caribbean countries at the II CELAC Summit (Havana, January 27, 2014).

The CELAC-China Forum is a cooperation mechanism that aims to deepen political, economic and cultural relations between Latin American and Caribbean countries and China, and a forum for the participating countries to hold discussions on issues of common interest on the international agenda.

Trade relations between Latin America and the Caribbean and China have grown substantially in recent years. In the period 2003-2013, bilateral trade between the region and China grew almost ninefold (from US$ 29 billion to US$ 259.6 billion).