THE People’s Republic of China (PRG) observed its 74th anniversary on October 1, 16 months after the 50th anniversary of establishment of diplomatic ties with Guyana in 1972.

At the 50th anniversary observances on June 27 last year, Guo Haiyan, the PRC’s Ambassador to the Cooperative Republic of Guyana, aptly observed that under Presidents Xi Jinping and Irfaan Ali, the two nations were starting another stage of the relationship that actually started 60 years earlier in 1962, when Janet Jagan, as General Secretary of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) of Guyana, visited the PRC and was received by Chairman Mao Zedong and Premier Zhou Enlai.

The 1962 visit by Janet Jagan and the establishment of diplomatic ties under the then People’s National Congress (PNC) administration a decade later, reflected one of the rare foreign-policy commonalities between Guyana’s two major parties at the time and China’s commitment to support Guyana at all times.

As the ambassador also correctly noted back then, “Mutual respect and equality are the principles of China-Guyana relations, which have been proven in the fact that after the first 50 years, bilateral trade volume bucked the pandemic trend and grew by 123 percent, reaching US $710 million in 2021, which has increased by nearly four-fold in the past decade alone, while Chinese investments in Guyana are growing rapidly…”

In 2018, China and Guyana also signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), covering agriculture, energy and mining, transportation, telecommunications and many other fields that have surely injected new impetus into the mutually beneficial cooperation the two nations share.

Medical cooperation has also been a bedrock of the ties between Guyana and China, as, in 1993, China sent a medical team to Guyana, which was the first to Latin America and the Caribbean; then, after the COVID-19 pandemic, Guyana was also the first Caribbean nation to receive China-made COVID vaccines in 2020.

In addition, over the past 31 years, 18 consecutive China medical teams with hundreds of experts have been to Guyana, altogether collectively treating over 1.3 million cases and performing more than 70,000 surgeries.

Guyana and China stand at key points in their respective drives to development and modernisation in 2023, with Guyana harnessing its new natural resources, with Chinese help as well, for a better future for all; and China taking confident strides toward its second centenarian goal of becoming a great modern socialist country in all respects, in this the 21st Century.

As developing and emerging nations, Guyana and China also face major development opportunities today.

Standing at their respective new historical starting-points, it’s clear that Ambassador Guo’s observation that under the leadership of the Presidents of the two countries, China and Guyana took the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations as ‘an opportunity to deepen mutual political trust, strengthen economic and trade cooperation, enhance exchanges and mutual understanding, and continuously write a new chapter of bilateral relations, so as to move together toward a brighter future of common prosperity.’

That much was underlined when Presidents Ali and Xi spoke by phone to mark the 50th anniversary and again last year when they met in China to take mutual ties to the next higher levels after the first half-a-century.

As Guyana continues into the second half of the PPP/C’s current mandate and China heads towards its historic 75th anniversary of the PRC in 2024, the two nations are doing so, confident in their respective commitments to use their resources to better the lives of all their people, in the mutual interests of One Guyana and One China!