Chinese President Xi Jinping charted new course for Sino-Latin American ties in his speech at the Peruvian Congress on Tuesday. Experts said that as a declaration of China’s policy towards the Latin American region, the speech indicated that both sides will brace a new era featuring accelerated cooperation.

During his speech, Xi called on China and Latin American countries to better build their community of common destiny and upgrade comprehensive cooperative partnership to a new level.

Xi proposed that China and Latin America and the Caribbean hold high the banner of peaceful development and cooperation, seek synergy between their development, speed up cooperation to realize their respective dreams and bring benefits to both peoples.

This announcement on China's policy toward Latin America is of great importance, said Wu Hongying, director of the Latin America office of the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations.

According to her, the Sino-Latin American ties have made great progress since the Forum of China and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean Nations was established. With new development pattern taking initial shape, bilateral relations have come to a new historical stage.

Wu elaborated China’s policy toward Latin America in the new era, saying that it will persist in peaceful development and cooperation, continue efforts to dovetail strategies with regional countries, speed up and upgrade practical cooperation and share development outcomes.

Xu Shicheng, a senior researcher on Latin American studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, noted that by listing Latin America and Caribbean nations as one of China's diplomatic priorities, Xi's speech lifted the strategic position of China's policy toward the whole region.

"A closer China-Latin America relationship will also cement China’s friendship with more countries," said Wu Baiyi, a research fellow at the Institute of Latin American Studies with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Hailing Xi's speech as a repositioning of China's relations with Peru and other Latin American countries, Wu said that China and Latin America share many common grounds in terms of development strategy and fundamental interests since both sides are at a similar stage of development.

He also called on the two sides to forge an inclusive, sharing, and win-win community of common destiny through practical cooperation and multilateral frameworks such as Free Trade Area of Asia-Pacific.

Wu added that if China and Latin America can advocate free trade and investment together, they could significantly address challenges to globalization and integration, protectionism, populism, and other risks faced by some developed countries.

China and Latin America have the faith and ability to ensure a sustained and stable relationship by beefing up collaboration and aligning development strategies based on the cooperation outcomes that have already been reaped, the scholar stressed.

Xu echoed that China and Latin America have made parallel progress in both overall and bilateral collaboration, as a result their connectivity, capacity cooperation and cultural exchanges have achieved remarkable results.

Yin Hengmin, former Chinese ambassador to Peru, said that the "community of common destiny" proposed by Xi shows China’s resolve to develop long-term friendship with Latin American countries. This new proposal, drawn from the development of bilateral ties in recent years, also reveals China’s consistent commitment to win-win cooperation, Yin added.

With the institutionalization of exchanges in politics, regional governments, think-tanks, and youth, China-Latin America relations have taken a giant leap forward, said Liu Yuqin, former Chinese ambassador to Chile, adding that both sides now have unprecedented need for closer cooperation and mutual understanding.

China and Latin America will, by docking their own ties with regional and global development, leverage the construction of a new type of international relations based on win-win cooperation in their community of common destiny, Liu added.