Uruguay's President Yamandu Orsi (R) speaks with Chinese President Xi Jinping during a welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on February 3, 2026. (Photo by JESSICA LEE / POOL / AFP)
CHINA and Uruguay should work together to advance an “equal and orderly multipolar world”, President Xi Jinping told his counterpart Yamandu Orsi, as their nations signed up to cooperate in areas from trade to the environment.
Orsi’s visit is the first by a South American leader to the Chinese capital since the United States invaded Venezuela in January and captured then president Nicolas Maduro in a raid.
A media pool report cited Xi as saying China backed Latin American and Caribbean nations in upholding sovereignty, security and development interests, to help defuse a volatile international situation and “escalating unilateral bullying”.
China and Uruguay should “work together to advance an equal and orderly multipolar world and an inclusive, universally beneficial economic globalisation,” Xi said yesterday.
The meeting comes in the wake of a flurry of visits to China by Western prime ministers this year, from Britain’s Keir Starmer to Canada’s Mark Carney and Finland’s Petteri Orpo.
Orsi said the strategic partnership of China and Uruguay was going through its “best moment,” and called for both nations to “commit to raising it to a new level”, the pool report added.
He is leading a delegation of 150, including business leaders, on a visit from Sunday until Feb 7, which will also swing through the commercial hub of Shanghai.
China and Uruguay signed a declaration to deepen a strategic partnership yesterday, as well as 12 documents to cooperate in areas ranging from science and technology to the environment, intellectual property and the meat trade.
Uruguay would like to increase trade in goods, especially through diversification, and invest more strongly in services and investment, the pool report added.
China “is willing to work with Uruguay and other regional countries to deepen and solidify the building of a China-Latin America community with a shared future,” Xi said.
It backs Uruguay in taking on the rotating presidency of the Group of 77+, he added, aiming to boost solidarity in the developing Global South.
“The world today is undergoing profound changes unseen in a century, with a complex and volatile international situation and escalating unilateral bullying,” Xi said, adding that China had always attached great importance to ties with Latin America. — Reuters
