The Tribune

By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Senior Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

CHINESE Ambassador to The Bahamas Dai Qingli yesterday celebrated the July 1 centennial anniversary of the Communist Party of China to give an insight into her country’s position in the world, its aims and relations with The Bahamas.

She noted that 70,000 people visited Tiananmen square on July 1 to participate in the anniversary celebration.

“Without CPC there would be no new China and the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation would be beyond reach,” she said.

Ms Qingli said some people around the world have a mistaken impression of China’s ambitions and goals.

“As you can see from President Xi’s speech, none of the points in this speech refer to China’s readiness to take over the world,” she said.

“I think what keeps Chinese leaders awake at night is not how to achieve hegemony in the world but rather how to deliver better living standards for our people. But some people say there is a law in international relations that whichever country comes up to around two thirds of the US’s GDP, then the US will see that country as an enemy. Well last year China’s economy was 70 percent of the US so probably there is some kind of irritability in their seeing China as a competition and that’s truly unfortunate.”

Ms Qingli told reporters she hopes tourism from China to The Bahamas expands in the years to come.

“The number of Chinese visitors coming to The Bahamas each year before the pandemic is not very encouraging,” she said.

“It is only a fraction of the number of Chinese people who regularly visit overseas every year and also that’s a small fraction of the number of visitors The Bahamas receives, so we have a lot to work on in the tourism sector. But we do hope we can turn China into a growth market for Bahamas tourism because there are around 145 million Chinese people making these visits to foreign countries every year and we have 300,000 Chinese students in the US and 100,000 students in Canada too so these people can potentially be visitors to The Bahamas.

“We do need to overcome some, maybe more challenging aspects. The challenging aspect is you have to get Chinese visas in order to come to The Bahamas, either from Europe or the US and airlift is also a challenging aspect. It took me like, 25 hours to reach here, not counting the wait time.

“We need to try to tap the potential and focus on the positive aspects. We need more positive dialogue between the two governments in terms of how to develop the tourism sector in The Bahamas and we also need more direct dialogue between airlines and tourist operators and we need better promotion strategies for The Bahamas in China because now the biggest attractions for Chinese tourists in The Bahamas are the swimming pigs and the pink sands.

“They like that very much but they only have a very superficial understanding of The Bahamas. We have to have people actually traveling to support the flights. So without these numbers of people, airline companies wouldn’t want to operate these flights, it might be loss-making for them.”

Ms Qingli also said she hopes to improve political relations between China and The Bahamas.

“Politically, I hope to have better political relations between the countries, particularly more exchange of high-level visits and contacts which were disrupted by the pandemic and in economic and trade relations,” she said.

“Certainly and equally importantly I would like to see more people-to-people exchanges and a stronger cross-cultural understanding between the two countries. For example, I want to see more students coming to China to study and we want to see mutual visits between our young people, our women, people with disabilities and also media exchanges are very important.”

China has donated five batches of medical supplies to The Bahamas during the fight against COVID-19, with another batch on its way to the country.

“We have every intention to provide more help to The Bahamas,” said the ambassador.

“We have so far provided five batches of medical supplies to this country and we are in the process of purchasing and shipping another batch of medical supplies. Due to some transport problems this is not as fast as we hoped but in any case, we will make sure that these shipments arrive safely and as early as possible in your country.”