Entry modes for Chinese enterprises in Latin America

Abstract

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has been an important project for President Xi Jinping on foreign soil. The initiative gained momentum through colossal investments in Eurasia and Africa, mainly through infrastructure projects, backed by generous funding from Chinese financial institutions. A few years later, Latin America emerged as a new target for geographically extending the BRI. The region provides sufficient motivation to entice Chinese investors; it is well endowed with natural resources, offers a market of approximately 670 million people, and has many unmet needs. In addition, recent geopolitical reasons such as the ongoing trade war between the United States and China may give Chinese enterprises indirect access to the world's largest consumer market. We present a brief overview of the relationship between China and Latin America, focusing on the mode of entry of Asian companies into these territories. We analyze the primary entry mode of Chinese enterprises and whether they do so through Greenfield Investment (GI) or Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A). For this purpose, we use data from the China Global Investment Tracker. Thus, we intend to provide a complete picture of how public and private Chinese organizations are gaining a foothold in Latin America, and present its managerial implications.