On April 28, Secretary of the CPC Yichang Municipal Committee Wang Li met with a delegation of 30 ambassadors from 20 Latin American and Caribbean countries.

　　Wang Li welcomed the delegation’s visit to Yichang. He said that The Belt and Road Initiative, which advocated and promoted by President Xi Jinping, has received positive responses from Latin American and Caribbean countries and achieved fruitful results in bilateral exchanges and cooperation. Located between the mega-cities of Wuhan and Chongqing on the Yangtze River Economic Belt, Yichang lies in the southwestern part of Hubei Province. On April 24, 2018, President Xi Jinping inspected the Yangtze River and Hubei province，with his first stop in Yichang, setting the rule of “to step up conservation of the Yangtze River and stop its over development” for the Yangtze River Economic Belt. New progress has been made in Yichang’s efforts to give priority to ecology and green development. Especially in 2020, Yichang has played a significant role in the prevention and control of the COVID-19 under the strong leadership of the Central Committee of the CPC. The city’s economy in general has continued its good trend of rapid recovery, making a wider range of opening up to the outside world. Yichang sincerely welcomes friends from Latin America and the Caribbean countries to visit and learn more about it，making joint efforts to further deepen pragmatic exchanges and cooperation in various fields, so as to accelerate economic and social development，as well as improving people’s well-being.

　　Uruguay’s ambassador to China, Fernando Lugris, on behalf of all the ambassadors present, congratulated Yichang on its achievements in pandemic prevention and control and economic and social development. He said that as the site of the world-renowned Three Gorges Project and the origin of kiwifruit, Yichang has much in common with Latin American and Caribbean countries in the fields of hydropower and agricultural development, and there is a wide scope for mutual cooperation. Taking this visit as an opportunity, they will actively make the beautiful landscape of Yichang more widespread, and carry out exchanges and cooperation with Yichang in sustainable development and green development, promoting the friendships to a new level.

　　Vice Secretary Municipal Committee of the CPC Ma Zejiang and Vice Mayor Zhou Zhengying also attended the meeting. (Reporter Lei Pengcheng)