-Chinese Scholar highlights

With Guyana becoming a rising player in regionally and internationally, the emerging areas of cooperation are vast, Guo Lingwei, a scholar of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said.
In a recent interview with this newspaper, she highlighted how Guyana is making waves not only in the regional realm but also internationally and how China is supporting this growth.
While Guyana and China have strong ties in many areas, the partnerships in agriculture, technology, healthcare and education are expected to expand, she explained.
Focusing on bilateral cooperation within the agriculture sector, she said that collaboration in this area will help Guyana to enhance this traditional industry.
In particular, she said that technology exchange and collaboration in the sector could aid in bolstering productivity in rice and sugar.

On that note, the Precision Farming practice in Rice Production project funded under the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) – China South-South Cooperation program was concluded successfully.
Through financial and technical support under the FAO – China South-South Cooperation project and a Regional E-Agriculture project, some US $165,000 was invested to procure five advanced crop management drones and laptops. Extension and technical officers from the GRDB also benefited from drone pilots and data analysts’ training.

Turning her attention to healthcare, the Chinese Scholar pointed out how the cooperation within this sector is resulting in the construction of advanced hospitals, the betterment of local pharmaceutical production and improving healthcare resilience.
In fact, in 2022, the Guyana Government signed contracts with China’s Sinopharm International for the construction of six new regional hospitals across five of Guyana’s ten regions, with the aim of enhancing healthcare delivery nationwide. Sinopharm’s Chief Engineer Fu Qiang had stated that these hospitals will provide modern healthcare facilities, with each covering 65,000 square feet.

Additionally, in terms of human resource development within the health sector, so far, Jiangsu Province has sent 20 batches of medical teams, with 295 person-times to Guyana to carry out medical work.
In July 1993, according to the Memorandum of Cooperation signed between the governments of China and Guyana, Jiangsu Province was designated to undertake the task of sending medical teams to Guyana.
The current medical team is the 20th medical team to Guyana organised by Nantong City, with a total of eleven members working at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC), and five at the Linden Hospital Complex.
Notably, last year, it was published that because of Guyana and China’s relationship in the health sector, this resulted in bountiful success, with thousands of surgeries conducted locally in partnership with Chinese medical teams.
Further, it was said that Guyana was able to conduct its first-ever open-heart surgery, and its first-of-its-kind minimally invasive laparoscopic surgeries among other unique procedures.
And lastly, on the subject matter of education, Guo explained how important developing a country’s human resources is.

In this regard, she said that cooperation between Guyana and China’s educational institutes have promoted student exchanges, among other positives.
Guo said: “All these partnerships will support Guyana’s goal to achieve economic diversification and sustainability.”

An example of a partnership which has been promoting education, cultural exchange, and the fostering of mutual understanding between China and Guyana is the Confucius Institute, University of Guyana (CIUG).
The Confucius Institute is a joint venture between UG, Dalian University of Foreign Languages (DUFL) and Hanban. The agreement to establish the institute here was signed in March 2013, and the Institute was officially launched on May 19, 2014.
Thus far, the CIUG has enrolled 4,363 students studying mandarin.