China-Latin America Relations: Main Themes, Main Problems

Abstract

Historically there has been very scarce interest from academics and politicians in the field of China-Latin America relations. This has recently changed as a consequence of China’s impressive economic development trajectory after the introduction of economic reform policies of growing openness towards the international economy since the late 1970s. With China’s growing economic weight in the global economy, the country has gained a more central role on the international political scene. This “rise” of China’s global importance has made countries from all world regions increasingly interested in relations with China, and has raised the attention of academics in China and its global role as well as its relations with individual countries and different world regions across the board. From a Chinese perspective, interests have mostly been focused on relations with dominant countries in the developed global North as well as on relations with its regional neighbors, while there has barely been any interest in Africa and Latin America (Armony, 2011: 23-24). However, with its growing internationalization and industrialization, China’s economic interest in developing countries has grown. For example, China’s interest in Africa and its economic presence on that continent has grown substantially during the last 15-20 years, gaining much interest from the academic community. In the same period, China has also gradually become important for Latin American countries raising the interest of academics and politicians in Latin America in China-Latin America relations. This interest took off particularly after China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001, although a country like Brazil already celebrated a strategic partnership with China in 1993 (Christensen, 2016). However, it was not until the 2000s that bilateral economic relations between Latin American countries and China took off. Initially, academic interest centered on bilateral economic relations between China and individual Latin American countries, with a particular focus on the differential economic impact of China on Latin American countries. A typical distinction was between South American countries, which were generally considered to be