Before his meeting with the President of China, Gustavo Petro met the head of the Chinese Legislature, Zhao Leji, and participated in a welcoming ceremony at the Great Hall of the People, seat of government.

According to official sources, the president and his delegation held a meeting with the China Harbor Engineering Company, one of the companies that make up the consortium in charge of the construction of the first line of the Bogotá metro.

Petro also held talks with authorities from the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation regarding the relaunch of Colombia’s railway network, one of the president’s objectives in China. “Relaunching the national railway network makes sense if we look at it as the commercial bridge between the Pacific and the Atlantic,” he declared upon his arrival in Beijing.

In the president’s opinion, “Colombia made a huge mistake by destroying its railways, by switching to much more expensive and inefficient technological forms,” hence the relaunch of railways is strategic for the development of the country.

In statements to the press, Petro highlighted that his agenda will also deal with the trade balance deficit with China and over-indebtedness, the product of “a very bad debt policy in the times of Covid-19.”

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