While this blog is mostly devoted to issues surrounding the Sino-African partnership, one must not forget that China is similarly active in other regions of the world, most recently Latin America. China's strategies in Latin America seem to differ little from those employed in Africa, with 'oil-for-infrastructure' deals, tech investments, extensive bilateral trade agreements, and the influx of cheap Chinese goods as the wooing tactics of choice. Trade between China and Latin America soared from $10 billion in 2000 to $140 billion in 2008.
As is true of Africa, Beijing's main interest in Latin America is the guaranteeing of access to the region's raw materials - oil, soybeans, copper, iron ore, etc. - to fuel its continued rapid growth. Yet as is also true in Africa, China's ambitions are also grandly geopolitical. According to Tyler Bridges:
China is beefing up its embassies throughout Latin America, opening Confucian centers to expand Chinese culture, sending high-level trade delegations throughout the region and opening the door for ordinary Chinese to visit Machu Picchu, Rio, and other tourism hot spots.
Aiping Yuan came to Rio de Janeiro from Beijing in 1997 on a lark, fell in love with the city, and decided to stay. She studied Portuguese, and when Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva made his first visit to China in 2004, she opened a small school in Rio to teach Mandarin.
She began with six students and today has 300, including senior executives at Petrobras, the country's biggest oil company, and Vale do Rio Doce, the biggest mineral producer. Both have growing business with China.
"Chinese is the language of the future for Brazil," Yuan said with a big smile.
Chinese will be the language of more than just Brazil if Beijing's leaders have anything to do with it. As Bridges aptly observes, China is buying zinc from Peru, copper from Chile, and iron ore from Brazil. It's shipping equipment to Brazil, buses to Cuba, clothes to Mexico and cars to Peru. Chinese tech giants Huawei and ZTE are likewise grabbing business from established telecom suppliers across the continent, most prominently in Argentina, Chile and Colombia. Yet while China seemingly has a Latin America strategy (or perhaps a 'developing world' strategy more generally; it's hard to tell), Latin America doesn't appear to have a China strategy.
Writing in his excellent blog, Tom Pellman cites David Shambaugh who notes:
Latin America is acting toward China's expansion in the world in a reactive, disorganized or ad hoc fashion. When I asked Itamaraty (Brazil's foreign ministry) about its strategy on China, I got blank stares. There is no strategy.
Such a lack of strategy indubitably works to the detriment of Latin American states - as it does African nations which similarly lack much in the way of a policy of engagement with the eager Chinese - who stand to gain from Chinese investment. In Latin America, as much as in Africa, there are many benefits to be accrued from recent Chinese interest. Yet without a plan of action, it seems that China will walk away as the sole beneficiary when all is said and done.