Chinese Ambassador Fang Qiu transformed one of his greatest desires into reality, when he presented three San Fernando students with scholarships on Friday morning.
“This helps to turn one of my wishes to reality,” he said at an awards ceremony held at City Auditorium, San Fernando.
He thanked mayor Junia Regrello for his response to establishing the first Chinese Ambassador Scholarship, in collaboration with the San Fernando City Corporation. He also thanked educators on whose shoulders, he said, lies the future of this country as well as the awardees for their excellence.
“It is my pleasure to be here today to present the very first Chinese Ambassador Scholarship to three outstanding students of San Fernando – Karishma Ramdial of San Fernando West Secondary School, Naomi Brown of Open Bible High School and Daniel Garcia, a student of St Paul’s Anglican Primary School.
Their progress will be monitored and further assistance would be provided once they continue to show potential.
“I am happy to see that China and Trinidad and Tobago (TT) hold the same view on education, and have placed education as an integral part of our bilateral cooperation.
“Over the years, many of TT’s top students have studied in China with the Chinese Government Scholarship and have become young envoys of our two cultures.”Recently, China announced it will provide more government scholarships to Caribbean countries including TT and Qiu said it is his sincere hope more TT students will have the chance to visit China and experience the Chinese culture one day.
“The awardees today will of course, be our first choices.”
As ambassadors, he said one of his strongest wishes is to further promote the long-standing and well-established friendship between China and TT.
“A friendship that has withstood the trials of hardship and is growing ever stronger as time goes by. In the hard times of the pandemic, we have been fighting shoulder by shoulder and our bond of friendship has been further strengthened. No one is an isolated island in today’s world. Solidarity and co-operation are indispensable to overcoming the difficulties facing us.”
Practical cooperation between the two countries, he said, has witnessed rapid growth and yielded fruitful results. He drew as an example, the Southern Academy of the Performing Arts (SAPA), built by a Chinese company, which has become a local landmark and an important hub for cultural exchanges.
“TT is the first English-speaking Caribbean country to participate in the Belt and Road Initiative. The first BRI project, the Phoenix Park Industrial Estate, not far from San Fernando, is to be completed after this year, and is set to inject new impetus to the social economic development of TT and benefit more people.”
He said the two countries are also working closely to explore potential of cooperation under the framework of the Global Development Initiative (GDI) which was proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping last year, to pool international strength to foster more robust, greener and more balan
