President Danilo Medina said during the inauguration of the remodeling of the public hospital in Puerto Plata that the only thing the Dominican Republic asked the People’s Republic of China for when switching relations from Taiwan was for it to transfer the Dominican university students in Taipei to similar university programs in continental China, recognizing the credits the students had already accumulated. “There is no more,” said Medina in Puerto Plata. Around 20 Dominicans study in Taiwan on Taiwan scholarships.
The President denied the government had been won over by offers of funding for local projects. “It’s being said that money will come. No. I think they want to discredit the relationship before it is born. Of course, when two countries establish diplomatic relations they do so on the principle of cooperation between the two,” he acknowledged. He spoke of expectations that cooperation would be widespread and beneficial for both countries and mentioned a letter received from China President Xi Jinping mentioning this point.
Medina explained the signing with China would have happened sooner or later. He said: “It was not possible for the Dominican Republic to continue to not have relations with the second world economy, which is China. Those relationships had to be established at some point in history and I had the responsibility to decide and decided it.”
Center for Export and Investment of the Dominican Republic (CEI-RD) statistics reveal trade between the DR and the PRC for 2008-2010 was US$2.57 billion. Of that amount, the Dominican Republic exported US$373.46 million (15%), while it imported US$2.15 billion from China. The DR primarily exported copper, static converters, medical devices, machine parts and electrical apparatus.
Read more in Spanish:
https://presidencia.gob.do/noticias/danilo-unico-compromiso-con-china-es-que-reciban-estudiantes-becados-en-taiwan-bajo-misma
2 May 2018
