China and the CELAC countries have been working together for three years now. A joint plan sets a ten-year trade volume target at 50 billion US dollars. Both sides have been investing heavily for mutual growth. CGTN's Xu Xinchen explains some of the strategies.

XU XINCHEN BEIJING "We'll be talking about some big numbers and big-ticket moves. Many were laid out in that joint cooperation plan that came into place in 2015. It has made trade, investment and financial cooperation THE driving forces to propel both sides' growth.  So let's zero in on the funds. Some of them started trickling down into Latin America even before 2015: China set up a 35 billion US dollar package of financing arrangements in 2014. Some of those monetary boosts have gone into 20 countries. And China has another 30 billion US dollar special fund for China-Latin America production capacity cooperation, and a three billion US dollar Fund especially set aside for China-Caribbean Cooperation. And that's just some of the existing financial cooperation mechanisms. China also has billions of US dollars' worth of currency swaps with some CELAC countries. And seven of them are members of the Asia Development Bank, and we could tell the potential there. Going back to trade, China has just revealed it is starting the process of setting up a Free Trade Agreement with Panama. And in the last year, China and Chile have agreed to further upgrade their free trade agreement. So even if the action plan seems to have laid down ambitious goals, they look attainable and we're getting there."