Luis Ayllón
China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi will visit Spain on the 18th and 19th, according to diplomatic sources in The Diplomat.
Wang Yi plans to begin his stay in Spain in Andalusia, as on Sunday he will be in Seville and later in Cordoba, where he will meet his Spanish counterpart, José Manuel Albares.
On Monday, the head of Chinese diplomacy will travel to Madrid, where he will be received by His Majesty the King at the Zarzuela Palace, and by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, at the Moncloa Palace.
Wang Yi was already in our country in 2018 and was also received by the King, as well as by Mariano Rajoy and Alfonso Dastis who, at that time, were at the head of the Presidency of the Government and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. On that occasion, Spain showed its interest in actively participating in the Belt and Road initiative launched by the Chinese government, but subsequently, after the return of the PSOE to power, this interest waned and, in fact, Spain declined at the end of 2018 to join this new Silk Road.
As a result, this issue was not present in the talks that Pedro Sánchez held with the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, during his visit to Beijing at the end of March 2023, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Spain and China.
In any case, economic and trade relations between the two countries have grown considerably in recent decades and China has become Spain’s leading supplier of goods, the fourth largest trading partner after France, Germany and Italy, and Spain’s third largest export market outside Europe.
What was discussed at Sánchez’s meetings in Beijing were issues related to tourism, and months later, China announced that citizens of Spain, as well as those of France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Malaysia” will not require a visa to enter the country if their stay does not exceed 15 days. This is an experimental measure that came into effect on 1 December and will last until 30 November this year.
On the other hand, Chinese people often need several months to obtain a visa from Spanish consulates, which slows down the arrival of tourists, who had reached significant numbers before the pandemic. If in 2019, the number of visitors from China exceeded 700,000, in 2023, they exceeded 380,000, who are still among the tourists who spend the most in our country.
Wang Yi held the post from 2013 until the end of 2022 when he was replaced by Qin Gang. After the latter’s surprise dismissal just seven months later, Wang Yi took over the ministry again.
This will not be the first time he has met with Albares, as in July 2022 they spoke at the foreign ministers’ meeting in Bali, Indonesia, after a telephone conversation in March of the same year. On both occasions, Albares asked his Chinese counterpart for a Chinese effort to try to stop the war in Ukraine following Russia’s invasion.
Now, it is possible that the issue could be back on the table, along with the situation in the Gaza Strip, because China, which is preparing to conduct military exercises with Russia and Iran in March, is expected to try to influence the regime in Tehran to tie up the Houthi rebels in their harassment of ships crossing the Red Sea.
