Interview: China, Ukraine practical cooperation in 2021 fruitful, says Chinese ambassador

KIEV, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- China and Ukraine deepened their practical cooperation in various sectors last year under the Belt and Road Initiative, Chinese Ambassador to Ukraine Fan Xianrong has said.

"In recent years, China and Ukraine have taken the opportunity of deepening the cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative to comprehensively improve the level of cooperation in trade, infrastructure, investment, logistics and other fields," Fan said in a recent interview with Xinhua.

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, China and Ukraine have maintained robust economic cooperation in 2021 and two-way trade has set a record high in the first 11 months of the last year, Fan said.

"From January to November in 2021, bilateral trade in goods reached 17.36 billion U.S. dollars, up by 31.7 percent year-on-year. China continued to be the largest trading partner of Ukraine," the ambassador said.

The agreement signed in June 2021 on deepening cooperation in the field of infrastructure construction, he said, responds to the demands of enterprises of the two countries to strengthen mutually beneficial cooperation and provides a solid guarantee for deepening cooperation in infrastructure.

"In the first 11 months of 2021, the value of newly signed contracts to implement projects by Chinese-funded enterprises in Ukraine reached 6.64 billion dollars, setting a new record high," said Fan.

Chinese companies actively participate in investment projects in Ukraine, Fan said, adding that in 2021, China Longyuan Power Group Corporation Limited built and put into operation a large wind farm in Ukraine's Yuzhne city.

"Other Chinese companies are more willing to explore investment cooperation in areas such as the processing of agricultural products, land ports construction, automobile assembly and vaccine production," he said.

The multimodal transport between China and Ukraine developed rapidly last year, Fan said, adding that since the launch of freight train in 2020, a total of 57 container trains have arrived in Ukraine from China, and a freight train from Ukraine to China was also successfully launched on Sept. 28, 2021.

In addition, the Chinese company COSCO Shipping delivers containers every week to Ukraine on two sea routes, he said.

"The gradual upgrade of China-Europe freight train will open up new prospects for deepening cooperation between China and Ukraine in the field of multimodal transportation," said the ambassador.