Ecuador

Note: This column mainly includes countries along the Belt and Road and countries that have signed cooperation agreements with China on Belt and Road Initiative.

The friendly and cooperative relations between the People's Republic of China and the Republic of Ecuador grew smoothly in 2013.

The two countries maintained high-level exchanges. In March, NPC Vice Chairman Chen Changzhi led a delegation to Quito, capital of Ecuador, for the 128th Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and met with President of the National Assembly Fernando Cordero. In April, President Cordero of the National Assembly visited China and held talks with NPC Chairman Zhang Dejiang. In May, Chinese Minister of Water Resources Chen Lei attended the inauguration ceremony of Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa as Special Envoy of the Chinese government. In November, Ecuadorian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Human Mobility Ricardo Patiño Aroca paid an official visit to China and co-chaired the seventh political consultation between the two foreign ministries with Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

Other important mutual visits were made by Fan Xiaojian, Director of the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development, Jia Gaojian, Director of Central Compilation & Translation Bureau, and Bai Chunli, President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences from the Chinese side, and Wilson Pastor, Minister of Nonrenewable Resources, Javier Ponce Cevallos, Minister of Agriculture, Livestock, Aquaculture and Fisheries, and Walter Solis, National Secretary of Water from the Ecuadorian side.

On 17 April, the new Chinese Ambassador to Ecuador Wang Shixiong presented his letter of credence to Vice President Lenin Moreno.

Economic cooperation and trade was strengthened. CRCC-Tongguan Investment Co. Ltd. signed an investment agreement with the Ecuadorian side on the Mirador copper mine project. The Export-Import Bank of China and the Ecuadorian side signed a financing agreement on Minas San Francisco hydro power station. A carrier rocket carrying a small satellite made by Ecuador was successively launched at China's Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. The two countries signed the Air Services Agreement and the Agreement for the Avoidance of Double Taxation and the Prevention of Fiscal Evasion with respect to Taxes on Income.