The newly-appointed Chinese Ambassador to Manila Huang Xilian agreed to institutionalize the conduct of regular meetings between the two countries to thresh out issues involving the Duterte administration’s big-ticket infrastructure and development projects that are being implemented with funding support from the Chinese government.
Huang made the commitment in response to the proposal of Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III to hold regular dialogs between high-level officials of the Philippines and China to address such concerns.
Huang, in his recent courtesy visit to Dominguez, reiterated China’s commitment to further enhance the bilateral relations with the Philippines and heighten cultural and people-to-people exchanges.
“It would be very helpful if we have regular meetings regarding these projects. Our suggestion has always been to meet once every three or four months,” Dominguez said.
Huang agreed, saying he would “work very hard” to ensure that projects under the “Build, Build, Build” infrastructure modernization program that are being implemented in cooperation with China would be launched “as soon as possible.”
