López Obrador will have a bilateral meeting on Thursday, November 16th, with Xi Jinping

López Obrador will have a bilateral meeting on Thursday, November 16th, with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, in San Francisco, California.

The president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, will hold a bilateral meeting this Thursday with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, in the American city of San Francisco before the start of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum (APEC) in what will be the first meeting between both leaders, reported Foreign Minister Alicia Bárcena.

The meeting with Xi Jinping is a very important meeting (…) this is the first time that the leaders are going to meet,” said Bárcena during the daily presidential conference that was held this Tuesday in the city of Culiacán, in Sinaloa.

In addition to the meeting with the president of China, Bárcena said that also on Thursday López Obrador, who will travel to San Francisco on Wednesday, November 15th, will meet with the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau.

In the meeting with Xi, the chancellor noted, they will talk about bilateral economic exchange and the help that China has offered Mexico for the port of Acapulco, after the devastating impact of Hurricane Otis.

“One of the issues, obviously, is the value chain, how we organize ourselves to be able to better control the export and import of our products in general. And of course an alliance, since China has always been very interested in having a close relationship with Mexico,” Bárcena explained.

They will also discuss the controversial trafficking of fentanyl, and will follow up on the first meeting of the Working Group on Chemical Precursors between Mexico and China, held in October when a delegation from Mexico visited the Asian country to meet with Xu Datong, vice minister of the Ministry of Security. Public, as well as officials of the National Narcotics Control Commission.

At the meeting, the governments proposed draft rules for the Mexico-China Working Group on Chemical Precursors.

Previously, in May, López Obrador had revealed that he was seeking an agreement with China to exchange information on the illegal trafficking of fentanyl that comes from Asia to the country and then to the United States, where its consumption has become a public health problem and that It has become one of the points of tension with the US.

The president then claimed to have evidence of illegal trafficking of fentanyl from China, something that Beijing denied after a letter that the Mexican president sent to Xi in April to ask for help to combat this drug.

López Obrador sent a second letter to the president of China after the Mexican Navy found a shipment of more than 20 tons from the Chinese port of Qingdao that was hiding fentanyl and methamphetamines.

TYT Newsroom