Chile inaugurates its Consulate General in the city of Chengdu, the fifth it establishes in China

In the context of the 50 years of diplomatic relations between Chile and China, celebrated last December, our country today inaugurated a Consulate General in the city of Chengdu, in the province of Sichuan, which will allow continuing strengthening the bilateral ties between both nations.

The fifth consulate established by Chile in China also seeks to strengthen our consular support network in the most populated nation in the world, allowing the new headquarters to absorb the demand for care in a constituency that has some 250 million inhabitants.

"We hope that the inauguration of this Consulate will open new commercial and investment opportunities for entrepreneurs from both countries and that it will be a further step in the relations between China and Chile, which are going through an extraordinary moment," said the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Chile, Andrés Allamand, who participated in the opening ceremony online.

"We recently celebrated 50 years of the establishment of bilateral relations and each opportunity has been taken advantage of by both countries to improve our commercial exchange, to increase our investments, to generate exchanges in the field of culture, and to achieve a deeper friendship between the people of our countries," he added.

The new Consulate will become the first in a Latin American country in the province of Sichuan, where it will play an essential role in promoting investment and trade in that area with Chile, an aspect that takes on special relevance when the international community seeks to re-boost the commercial dynamism after the devastation caused by the pandemic.

For example, it will provide support to those Chilean companies that already plan to set up their headquarters in Sichuan, as is the case with some wine producers.

In any case, the constituency of the Consulate General in Chengdu will include, in addition to the province of Sichuan, the provinces of Guizhou, Yunnan, and Shaanxi, and also the city of Chongqing, which has a special autonomous regime. The headquarters will be directed by Consul General Gustavo Díaz Hidalgo.

China, Chile's first trading partner, already has four other Chilean consulates in its country: Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Guangzhou.

Also participating in the inauguration ceremony of the Consulate in Chengdu were the Chilean Ambassador to the People's Republic of China, Luis Schmidt; the deputy governor of the Sichuan Provincial Government, Chen Wei; the Deputy Secretary-General of the Provincial Government of Sichuan, Xing Tao; the Deputy Secretary of the Sichuan Provincial Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, Deng Xiaogang; the director of the Department of Consular Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China, Cui Aimin; the counselor of the Department of Latin American Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Gu Jiafeng; the Deputy Secretary-General of the Sichuan Provincial Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, Huang Chuanlong, and the director of the Sichuan Foreign Office, Cui Zhiwei.