MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Mrs. Kirchner praises China and calls for new world financial system

The Argentine president at the Beijing School of economics

Argentine President Cristina Kirchner called on Monday for an international system of financial regulation ahead of the G20's next meeting in Seoul.

“It is vital that when we arrive in Seoul in November we have an international system of financial regulation in place” she said on the first day of a China tour at the Beijing University of International Business and Economics. “To this end, the regulation or eradication of tax havens is essential as this is a problem for all economies.”

The Argentine leader said she agreed with Chinese President Hu Jintao, who had evoked a “fantasy system” of “banks, investment funds and derivatives which had created a kind of parallel international system which no one could control”.

Mrs. Kirchner, who will meet President Hu Jintao on Tuesday before leaving Wednesday for Shanghai, also called for a new alliance of emerging economies, underlining that the UN Security Council and International Monetary Fund had been around since 1945 and “that world no longer exists”.

The Argentine president insisted that “financial capitalism hides one of the greatest (examples of) structural corruption of recent times” adding that “we all have to fulfil the task of combating corruption with strength”.

Mrs Kirchner separated individual corruption, which the courts must handle, from structural corruption, “which oftentimes damages national economies and must be fought with greater regulation, control of users and of the state and transparent, anti-monopolistic and diversified policies”.

“A greater level of openness and competence in combating corruption in the face of the concentration of power and monopolies” is needed, she added.

The Argentine leader also said that structural corruption is engaged in by rating agencies, such as Moody’s or Standard & Poor’s, for money or in accord with string-pulling.

More specifically on Sino-argentine relations Mrs. Kirchner said that “Argentina aspires to (have) ties of harmonious cooperation with China, to the reciprocal benefit of both countries and to parallel development”.

The Argentine president was given at the Beijing University with an honorary degree from the hands of university chancellor Shi Jianjun, who called Argentina a “world power in resources for seeking peace.”

“The synergy between the two countries must improve intelligently. China needs food for its more than 1.3 billion inhabitants and Argentina, with its 40 million (people), is the eighth largest country in the world in area and possesses great capacity as a platform for the agri-business industry” said Mrs. Kirchner.

Energy and food will be the main items of international trade in the 21st century “and we can work with China,” she insisted.

On Tuesday, Fernandez will be received at an official ceremony and banquet in the Great Hall of the People by Chinese President Hu Jintao.

Before heading on to the university, Mrs. Kirchner inaugurated a seminar on business, trade and multi-sector development organized by the Argentine Foreign Ministry in which firms of both countries – including small and medium-sized companies – are participating to establish international links.

In 2004, China and Argentina signed a strategic alliance and on this occasion it is expected that the two nations will sign accords related to rail transport, energy, trade in fish products and fruit with the additional aim of stimulating Chinese purchases of Argentine soy oil, which Beijing has suspended in an apparent retaliation over Argentina’s protectionist practices.