<h6><strong>Eduardo González</strong></h6> <h4><strong><span class="HwtZe" lang="en"><span class="jCAhz ChMk0b"><span class="ryNqvb">The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, continued his official trip to the People's Republic of China yesterday in Shanghai, where he defended, before businessmen from both countries, an increase in trade and investments between Spain and China and the development of "fairer and more balanced" economic relations.</span></span></span></strong></h4> <div class="lRu31" dir="ltr"> <div id="ow120">Pedro Sánchez began the day with his speech at the opening session of the <strong>Spain-China Business Meeting</strong>, in which he defended an economic relationship between the two countries based “on openness” and in which there is “more trade and investment”, especially in sectors such as advanced industrial technology, the agri-food sector, green hydrogen, sustainable infrastructure, the circular economy or energy efficiency. In any case, he warned, bilateral economic relations must be “fairer and more balanced”.</div> </div> The head of the Executive also advocated <strong>dialogue between China and the European Union to redirect tensions between the two parties</strong> following Brussels' decision to impose tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, a measure that Beijing has responded to by opening an anti-dumping investigation (unfair competition) against certain imports of pork and derivatives from the European Union. This measure could particularly affect Spain, the main European exporter of pork to China. According to Sánchez, this dialogue should lead to a negotiated and agreed solution within the framework of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to avoid a trade war "that will benefit no one" and that, at the same time, protects the interests of the Spanish and European industry. Later, Pedro Sánchez visited the headquarters in Shanghai of the <strong>Envision </strong>company, a Chinese multinational that will build the future battery gigafactory in Navalmoral de la Mata (Cáceres). On this occasion, according to Moncloa, another agreement was presented, embodied in a Memorandum of Understanding, for the development of an electrolyser plant for the production of green hydrogen in Spain with an investment, together with other business partners, of one billion dollars that will generate more than 1,000 direct and indirect jobs. <h5><strong>Inauguration of the Instituto Cervantes in Shanghai</strong></h5> Next, Pedro Sánchez unveiled the plaque with which the <strong>Instituto Cervantes in Shanghai</strong> is inaugurated, the second one that the institution opens in China, which makes Spain, in his words, “the only country with two recognised cultural centres” in the Asian giant. “Nothing exemplifies more clearly the friendship and the excellent degree of bilateral cooperation that unites China and Spain,” said the President of the Government. During the event, according to a press release from Cervantes, Sánchez said that the interest between the languages of both countries, Chinese and Spanish, is reciprocal, since Spanish “has the help of invaluable Hispanists” and Spain is one of the European countries where the study of Mandarin Chinese “is most dynamic.” The Instituto Cervantes has had a presence in China since 2006, when it opened in Beijing, in the Chaoyang district. A year later, in 2007, the then Prince and Princess of Asturias inaugurated the Miguel de Cervantes Library in Shanghai, which until yesterday depended on the Spanish Consulate, but was managed by the Institute. For his part, Luis García Montero, director of the Instituto Cervantes, recalled that Chinese and Spanish are the two most spoken native languages in the world. “An Anglo-Saxon world that does not include Chinese and Spanish is not only a limited and blind world, it is a world of lies,” he added. The event, which was also attended by the Spanish ambassador to China, Marta Betanzos, was preceded the day before by the signing, at the People's Palace in Beijing, of the agreement <strong>between the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares</strong>, and the Chinese Minister of Culture and Tourism, Sun Yeli, by which the creation of the new Cervantes centre is formalised. <h5><strong>Bilateral meetings</strong></h5> Sánchez's day in Shanghai included, within the framework of the Business Meeting, bilateral meetings with the presidents of Chery, SAIC Motor and Hunan Yuneng, three large Chinese companies in the electric car value chain interested in developing investments in Spain or with plans already underway. The President of the Government also met with the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China in Shanghai. The President of the Government also learned first-hand about the work of the startup accelerator of the Sino-Hispanic Campus (CSH), which develops a platform for academic, research and innovation cooperation between China, Spain and Latin America, and is the only multilateral initiative with a permanent presence in China of Spanish-speaking universities.
