Ecuador: Benefiting from ties with China Read the article

Ecuador: Benefiting from ties with China Read the article

Recently, I have been traveling in South America, including some countries in Latin America, and I have a clear feeling that the relationship between China and this country is getting closer and closer. For example, wherever I go, I can connect to the local network through the network of China's mobile communication company, and the signal of our network is very smooth. Even some countries have not established diplomatic relations with the Chinese mainland so far. I was worried about whether there would be no link to the Chinese network in such places as Guatemala, but there is no barrier at all.

Ecuador, for example, is a small country with an underdeveloped economy, but it now has increasingly close economic and trade relations with China. We stopped at Manta, the main port in Ecuador, and a lot of these ships were coming from Asia, and they were bringing consumer goods that were very popular with the local people. Local friends also say that Chinese goods are cheap and welcome, and there are many Chinese companies here.

The problem now is that the economic and trade relationship between China and Ecuador is unbalanced. In the past 10 years, in the economic and trade relations between China and Ecuador, Ecuador's deficit amounted to 7 billion US dollars, which is quite a large number for a country like Ecuador. In addition to attracting more investment from Chinese companies, they also want to export more to the Chinese market. It turns out that you are not familiar with this country. Maybe some of you know that Ecuador is also famous for its shrimp and roses. But for Ecuador, there are more products that can be exported to China.

In particular, they emphasized to us that the world famous Panama hat is actually produced in Ecuador. Both the raw materials and the weaving methods are from Ecuador. We also visited the local Panama hat factory. In the streets of Manta, we also saw a tall statue, not very elaborate but it was clear that an Ecuadorian woman was knitting a straw hat. For their part, the hat was named "Panama Hat" for historical reasons, but they wanted the world to know that it was made by them.

The other thing is tourism. For Ecuador, a lot of tourism resources have been damaged after the earthquake in April last year. In fact, the service industry and tourism industry are also declining.