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All Lingua Sinica Dispatches

Chinese Ambassador Gives Live Interview to Peruvian Talk Show

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On October 31, 2021, Chinese ambassador to Peru Liang Yu (梁宇) gave a live interview on Agenda Política, a talk show on the Peruvian cable news channel Canal N, marking the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between China and Peru — established on November 2, 1971. Liang stressed that Peru was “among the first” Latin American countries to establish ties with China. It was in fact the third to do so, following Chile and Cuba. The interview featured standard CCP diplomatic framing. Liang described bilateral trade as accounting for 30 percent of Peru’s foreign trade, and characterized the two economies as having “complementary advantages” (經濟優勢互補) with “great potential for pragmatic cooperation” (務實合作大有可為) — language that presents what some have worried is Peru’s growing economic dependency on China as mutual opportunity.

Tianjin University Faculty Push State Line in Congo Op-Ed

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On March 6, 2026, Sun Xiaohan (孫小涵), a faculty member at Tianjin University’s School of Foreign Languages (外國語學院) and Global South Institute (全球南方研究院), co-authored an op-ed with the institute’s executive director, Professor Wang Zhan (王戰), published in Forum des As — the Democratic Republic of Congo’s most widely circulated mainstream newspaper. The piece, titled “Consolidating the Forces of Global Good Governance, Strengthening the Foundations of Multilateralism,” argued for the importance of the “Group of Friends for Global Governance” (全球治理之友小組) — a China-initiated diplomatic grouping framed around multilateralism, world peace, and development — for global stability and development. The Tianjin University Global South Institute, which describes its mission as serving Chinese national strategy while cultivating internationally oriented talent, has positioned itself as a think tank focused on area studies and China’s external communications outreach across Global South countries.

China’s Mission to ASEAN Briefs Regional Media on Two Sessions

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On March 26, 2026, China’s Mission to ASEAN hosted a media and think tank salon in Jakarta themed “Sharing the New Opportunities of China’s High-Quality Development,” briefing nearly twenty regional media organizations and think tanks on the outcomes of China’s annual Two Sessions (全國兩會) — the joint plenary meetings of China’s national (largely ceremonial) legislature and its top political advisory body, held each spring in Beijing. Ambassador Wang Qing (王擎) presented an extended reading of the Government Work Report and the forthcoming 15th Five-Year Plan (十五五規劃綱要), emphasizing China’s commitment to “high-quality development“ (高質量發展) — a political slogan coined by Xi Jinping at the 19th Party Congress in 2017 to signal a shift away from high-speed, quantity-driven growth toward an innovation-driven, high-value model centered on technological self-reliance, industrial upgrading, and greener production. Wang also called on both sides to advance the “Five Major Homes” (五大家園) — a framework encoding Xi Jinping’s vision for China-ASEAN relations around peace, tranquility, prosperity, beauty, and friendship — and to uphold “Asian values,” defined in official discourse as peace, cooperation, openness, and inclusiveness, as a deliberate counterweight to Western liberal frameworks.

CCP and Nuevas Ideas Party Host Media and Think Tank Exchange

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On April 8, 2024, Liu Jianchao (劉建超), Minister of the International Department of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee, met in Beijing with a high-level delegation from El Salvador’s ruling party, Nuevas Ideas, led by Vice President-elect Félix Ulloa. During the meeting, Liu emphasized that the CCP is willing to “promote exchanges and cooperation” between the counterpart departments of the two parties, specifically highlighting media and think tanks as key areas for collaboration. This engagement aimed to institutionalize the sharing of “experience in party building and state governance” to ensure the stable development of bilateral relations. The meeting official report by the International Department of the CCP underscores a strategic shift toward direct party-to-party coordination to align the communication apparatus of Nuevas Ideas with the ideological and media frameworks of the CCP.

Global South Institute

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Founded on September 29, 2024, the Tianjin University Global South Institute (天津大學全球南方研究院) is China’s first university-based research center dedicated to Global South studies. Housed within the School of Foreign Languages and led by Executive Director Professor Wang Zhan (王戰), the institute operates as a state-oriented think tank explicitly tasked with serving Chinese national strategy and advancing Beijing’s vision of a “community with a shared future for mankind.” It maintains four research centers focused on Francophone countries, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, East Asia, and the United States and India, and runs a multilingual public opinion monitoring and AI translation platform tracking political and social developments across Global South nations.

Canal N

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Canal N is a Peruvian pay-television news channel founded on July 4, 1999, and headquartered in Lima, as part of the El Comercio media group. It was Peru’s first 24-hour cable news channel, with programming focused on current affairs and political coverage. The channel was created under journalist Gilberto Hume and was instrumental in the fall of President Alberto Fujimori, who ruled from 1990 to 2000 and was later convicted of human rights abuses and corruption. In 2021, the channel drew criticism after journalists were forced out for refusing to produce coverage favorable to Keiko Fujimori’s presidential campaign.

Mission of the People’s Republic of China to ASEAN

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The Mission of the People’s Republic of China to ASEAN is Beijing’s dedicated diplomatic representation to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (東南亞國家聯盟), headquartered in Jakarta, Indonesia. Dialogue relations began in 1991, when Foreign Minister Qian Qichen (錢其琛) attended the 24th ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting. In 2003, China acceded to the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia, establishing a strategic partnership. It was the first dialogue partner to do so. China established its permanent mission at ASEAN in 2008. In 2021, Xi Jinping announced the upgrade to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership (全面戰略夥伴關係), the highest tier in China’s diplomatic relationship framework.

Association of Southeast Asian Nations

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Founded on August 8, 1967 in Bangkok with the signing of the ASEAN Declaration by the foreign ministers of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand, ASEAN is an eleven-member intergovernmental organization headquartered in Jakarta, Indonesia. Its founding was driven by Cold War-era concerns about communist expansion in Southeast Asia, though the declaration itself focused on accelerating regional economic, social, and cultural development. Membership expanded gradually — Brunei in 1984, Vietnam in 1995, Laos and Myanmar in 1997, and Cambodia in 1999. Timor-Leste joined as the eleventh member in October 2025. The ASEAN Charter, adopted in 2007 and entering into force in 2008, gave the bloc formal legal status. The organization operates across three community pillars — political-security, economic, and socio-cultural — and remains the central multilateral forum for Southeast Asian regional cooperation.

Tianjin University

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Founded in 1895 as Peiyang University (北洋大學) by statesman Sheng Xuanhuai under a Qing imperial charter, Tianjin University is the oldest institution of higher education in modern Chinese history. Renamed Tianjin University in 1951 following the nationwide restructuring of colleges under the People’s Republic, it was designated one of China’s first sixteen national key universities in 1959 and is now a Ministry of Education-administered institution under the country’s Double First-Class construction program for world-class universities. Today it collaborates with more than 260 institutions across 50 countries and encompasses schools spanning engineering, science, law, humanities, and medicine, with particular strength in chemical engineering, materials science, and precision instrumentation.