On 16 October 2020, Chinese Ambassador Huang Xilian attended the 2020 China-Philippines Educational Exchanges Seminar and witnessed the China-Philippines Guinness World Records Attempt -- the largest online video album of people waving. The event was held by 51Talk, China’s leading online education enterprise.

In his keynote speech, Ambassador Huang said that this year marks the 45th anniversary of the diplomatic relations between China and the Philippines. Under the guidance of President Xi Jinping and President Duterte, China-Philippines relations have been ushering in the New Golden Age, and the bilateral cooperation over the past 4 years in various fields has yielded fruitful results.

Ambassador Huang cited the Government-to-Government projects as good examples of such cooperation. He said that 11 major projects had been completed across the Philippine islands, ranging from drug rehabilitation to counter-terrorism, food security, radio and television services, etc. At present, another 6 projects are under implementation and 18 more are planned to be carried out, covering big-ticket infrastructure projects like highway, railway as well as livelihood projects such as flood control, irrigation etc. He also revealed that a large number of Chinese companies are making investments in the Philippines. China Telecom has joined Filipino partners to invest more than 5 billion US dollars in the Dito Telecommunity. The Panghua Group of China is planning to put in 3.5 billion US dollars to build an integrated steel plant which will break ground soon.

Ambassador Huang shared his personal experience on witnessing the ongoing projects. He visited a China-aid bridge project over the Pasig River linking Intramuros and Binodon, where he witnessed Chinese engineers and hundreds of Filipino workers were working hard together to overcome the adverse impact of the pandemic and striving for the completion of the project as scheduled.

Ambassador Huang pointed out that the Government-to-Government projects between the two countries have resumed over 80% work capacity. He further believed that such bilateral pragmatic cooperation had not only created many new jobs for Filipino workers, but also helped the Philippines’ economic recovery as it is striving to reach the goal of becoming an upper middle-income economy by 2022.

Also present at the ceremony were Philippine Ambassador to China，Jose Santiago Sta. Romana, CEO of 51talk Mr. Huang Jiajia, together with over 3000 Filipino teachers and their Chinese students，journalist from the two countries.