2016年CRI Observers: Xi's Visit to Middle East Making History

 

During President Xi's time in the three countries, China has established comprehensive strategic partnerships¹ with Saudi Arabia and Iran and has agreed to boost cooperation with Egypt under the Silk Road Initiative.

Mark J Ellyne, with the University of Cape² Town, said the visit to the three major economies in the Middle East will help exploit the great potential for trade between China and the region.

"This is an important visit and these three particular countries represent a very large share of Middle East GDP. In fact, if we take Saudi Arabia, which is the largest, plus Iran, plus Egypt, we're talking about almost 1.5 trillion dollars of GDP, which is probably the size of all of Sub-Saharan Africa combined. So this represents more than 10 percent of the Chinese economy. So we're talking about major trading partners."

China has been Iran's biggest trading partner for the last six years in a row, and is the second largest trading partner of Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia is the top source of crude oil for China, while Iran contributed 8 percent of China's total crude oil imports in the first 11 months of last year.

In the same period, China saw its exports to Egypt rise over 12 percent to nearly 11 billion U.S dollars with a total trade volume exceeding 11 billion.

Former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Rowsch Shaways said Chinese support will be a great help to many of the oil-producing countries in the region especially at a time when oil prices are plummeting³.

"They are going through a very difficult economic crisis, financial crisis because of the price of the oil. Most of these countries are needing financial support, loans for completing their budget, and this is a way that China can be very helpful for our countries."

Ellyne, based in Cape Town, believes China should be portrayed⁴ as more than simply a consumer of raw materials when it comes to global cooperation.

He singled out the China-proposed Silk Road initiatives.

"They've designed the One Belt One Road strategy, which is linked to the sort of old Silk Road idea, both an overland trade route from Europe to China, as well as a maritime⁵ trade route. So they're trying to develop those in greater detail with the partner countries along the way. Of course, Iran is a very critical country in this regard, Saudi Arabia would fit in, and Egypt fits in from the maritime strategy. So for the One Belt One Road, these countries would be important partners in the One Belt One Road approach. And I think China is trying to look at this as a win-win situation for both its partners and itself."

China has vowed⁶ to increase two-way trade with Middle East countries from 240 billion U.S. dollars in 2013 to 600 billion in the coming decade.

And during his visit to the Headquarters of the Arab League in Cairo, Chinese President Xi Jinping promised a 15-billion-U.S. dollar special loan for production capacity cooperation and infrastructure⁷ construction, 10 billion dollars of commercial loans to support production capacity cooperation, and 10 billion dollars of concessional loans.

For CRI, this is Luo Wen.

1 partnerships   

n.伙伴关系( partnership的名词复数 )；合伙人身份；合作关系

参考例句：

• Partnerships suffer another major disadvantage: decision-making is shared. 合伙企业的另一主要缺点是决定要由大家来作。 来自英汉非文学 - 政府文件
• It involved selling off limited partnerships. 它涉及到售出有限的合伙权。 来自辞典例句

2 cape   

n.海角，岬；披肩，短披风

参考例句：

• I long for a trip to the Cape of Good Hope.我渴望到好望角去旅行。
• She was wearing a cape over her dress.她在外套上披着一件披肩。

3 plummeting   

v.垂直落下，骤然跌落( plummet的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• Prices are rising, falling, going up, going down, shooting up, plummeting, etc. 物价在上涨、下跌、上升、下落、猛然上涨、骤然下跌等。 来自辞典例句
• The enemy plane went plummeting into the sea. 敌机直直掉进海里。 来自辞典例句

4 portrayed   

v.画像( portray的过去式和过去分词 )；描述；描绘；描画

参考例句：

• Throughout the trial, he portrayed himself as the victim. 在审讯过程中，他始终把自己说成是受害者。
• The author portrayed his father as a vicious drunkard. 作者把他父亲描绘成一个可恶的酒鬼。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

5 maritime   

adj.海的，海事的，航海的，近海的，沿海的

参考例句：

• Many maritime people are fishermen.许多居于海滨的人是渔夫。
• The temperature change in winter is less in maritime areas.冬季沿海的温差较小。

6 vowed   

起誓，发誓（vow的过去式与过去分词形式）

参考例句：

• He vowed quite solemnly that he would carry out his promise. 他非常庄严地发誓要实现他的诺言。
• I vowed to do more of the cooking myself. 我发誓自己要多动手做饭。

7 infrastructure   

n.下部构造，下部组织，基础结构，基础设施

参考例句：

• We should step up the development of infrastructure for research.加强科学基础设施建设。
• We should strengthen cultural infrastructure and boost various types of popular culture.加强文化基础设施建设，发展各类群众文化。