BUENOS AIRES, July 6 (Xinhua) -- Increasing cooperation between China and Latin America is providing the region with a long-term vision it often lacks, a top business executive said on Thursday.
Antonio Aracre, director general for South America at Syngenta, a Swiss-founded biotech company that applies science and technology to boost agricultural yields, led a seminar in Buenos Aires titled "Latin America and China: The future of food security, opportunities for the Southern Cone."
For the region, China is now a "strategic partner," said Aracre. "It provides us with a long-term vision."
China's long-term planning has enabled the Asian giant to make significant strides in development, and Latin America should learn to do the same, he noted.
"Over the past 30 years, on average, its economy grew at a rate of 9 percent a year, allowing it to incorporate 620 million people into the middle class. Are there political systems in the Western world that have lifted that many people out of poverty?" asked Aracre.
"We have to learn strategic planning from China, because that is what long-term planning is," he said.
Providing people with the opportunities that "social mobility" brings is a particular challenge for Latin America, one of the world's most economically unequal regions, so "we have to look to China, which knows how to do it well," he added.
Syngenta was recently acquired by China National Chemical Corporation, commonly known as ChemChina. "That's a good thing," said Aracre.
"I'm excited about that. ChemChina now holds 97 percent of Syngenta's shares, and it owns our operation, it's not a merger. We hope to be able to continue to grow with our shareholders and our clients," said Aracre.
In February 2016, ChemChina announced it wanted to purchase the company with an offer of 43 billion U.S. dollars, and on June 8 this year, it said it closed the deal on the acquisition, with the vast majority of shareholders accepting the offer.
"It is a major transaction" that is sure "to promote China's ... growth potential," he said.
The company reported 12.8 billion dollars in sales last year, 53 percent of which was from emerging economies.
