Evolution Of China's Policy Towards Latin American Countries And Its Effects In China-Latin American Relations

The world is witnessing how the People's Republic of China is rising as a global player in almost every topic of the new international agenda. The country's desire to become an active and influent actor is making scholars from multiple disciplines to examine how China is achieving its current power and the impact it has on the economic, political and social spheres. International Relations are not the exception inasmuch as during the first decade ofâ…©â…ªcentury, China had a very vigorous diplomacy and strengthened its presence in many areas of the world, using its increasing economic tools like investment, or political tools inside multilateral organizations and groups. Since Latin America has been one of the main scenarios of China's active diplomacy, this document wants to show how China's policy towards this region is and the effects of this policy in their relations, using and comparing the cases of Brazil and Colombia.A qualitative analysis is made throughout this document, based on primary and secondary information sources, which include news reports, interviews and conversations with some experts, plus scholarly and theoretic material on the subject. This text wants to display that Chinese diplomacy to Latin America has been gradual and progressive, and that the country has been employing both bilateral and multilateral channels. China is using the benefits and challenges of globalization, global governance, institutionalism, and economic interdependence as the basis of its relations with Latin America. On the other hand, by approaching Latin America is also tackling issues like energy and food security, which are important for its survival as a country and are also new global topics.After a brief historical recap of the last 60 years of relations between China and Latin America, the text draws attention to the driving factors that fuel them, such as the presence of natural resources and raw materials, the need of new markets and deeper trade, the growing strategic FDI, the mutual political support, elements of "soft power", the very prudent military cooperation, the double impact of the international financial and economic crisis and the Chinese interest in squeezing Taiwan's "international space". Then it moves to the impeding factors, which include a low FDI (compared to the ones of the United States and the European Union) in the region; the geographical, cultural and mental distance; the tendency of China to generalize a very diverse region like Latin America; and the worrying economic impact that China poses to strategic domestic sectors in that region of the world.Since the document makes the reference to the diversity of the region, one of the main contributions of this thesis is the sub division and categorization of Latin American countries by economical and political grouping; and in a lesser level by the level of ideological similarities. With these differentiations in mind, China should have a more efficient diplomacy as each of them has its own characteristics.The text tries to do some basic conceptualizations on the topic. It shows that China has been using a "fishnet diplomacy" to cover the whole region, as the Chinese Policy Paper towards Latin America and the Caribbean Countries proves it. Nevertheless, the country has had more "fishing rod results", and the comparison between the Brazilian and Colombian cases illustrate that Latin America is a diverse political space that requires specific strategies for each group of countries and even for each country (although this last point comes as a very difficult task and may only be applied to top countries or "strategic partners" like Argentina, Brazil, Chile or Mexico, while for the rest a group strategy would be more productive).The interaction between China and Brazil has very good perspectives as both of them show strategic interest in each other, and constitutes a good example of the positive results of Chinese diplomacy in the region, inasmuch as they have similar objectives, goals and perspectives. However, China and Colombia relations have not followed the same pattern, being rather superficial and slow motioned, mainly because of the influence of the United States, a very acute lack of knowledge between them, a worrying low government support and a very unbalanced and undiversified bilateral trade. Chinese interest in Colombia is low and Colombia's attention to China seems to be a passing wave that appears and fades away from time to time, showing that the Colombian government lacks of a long term state policy towards the China and Asia in general.The issues highlighted in this thesis are noteworthy for several reasons. One is that it aims to contribute to the actual body of knowledge about China and Latin America relations by doing a retrospective analysis of the past decades and putting particular attention to recent events. This becomes important because their relations are very dynamic and although trade and economics are top issues, new ones like technology and development should be taken into consideration. Second, it wants to show that China's diplomacy is organized and follows the current international trends, but it needs to tune up its generalist and collectivist point of view. And finally, this document wants to show a Latin American perspective of the relations with China, especially from a country like Colombia, which does not have much material about the topic. Hopefully the SIRPA will use the document as a tool or starting point to improve Area Studies inside its programs.