Flourishing cultural exchanges
The relations between China and Spain go beyond the economic and trade sectors. The two grand cultural countries also enjoy broad prospects for development of people-to-people and cultural exchanges and cooperation.
The enthusiasm of both peoples for learning the language and understanding the other's culture grows. China included Spanish in the country's senior high school curriculum this September, and Spain will also make efforts to bring Chinese into its national education system.
The number of Chinese tourists to Spain has also witnessed rapid growth in recent years: Spain received 514,000 Chinese tourists in 2017, an increase of more than 37 percent over the previous year. In the summer holiday of 2018, Spain ranked fifth among the most popular outbound destinations for Chinese visitors.
Spain coincides with Chinese tourists in many aspects including history, culture, historical sites, food and football, an important reason behind the growing number of Chinese tourists in Spain.
The cultural communication and cooperation mechanism under the framework of the BRI has opened the door to new possibilities of exchanges and collaboration between China and Spain.
The ties between China and Spain have a long history dating back to the era of the ancient Silk Road. The two countries already developed commercial relationships as early as the 15th century.
During President Xi's visit to Spain, the two countries are expected to publish a joint statement and sign documents to boost their collaboration in the third-party markets, service trade, taxation, culture, science and technology, and finance.
We have good reason to believe that China and Spain, both are countries with an ancient civilization, will enjoy closer interconnections within the framework of the BRI in the new era.
