| This study describes and analyzes the People’s Republic of China (PRC)-Colombia bilateral relationship before and after the PRC’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. Recognizing the importance of the PRC’s accession to the WTO as a decisive change in the world economic scenario. In this context, it is very outstanding the spectacular economic growth that the PRC has experienced and its new role as a global trading power, making evident the expansion of the emerging economies in the Asia-Pacific region as a defining characteristic of the international system in the second half of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st century.The transformation process of the PRC from communism to capitalism began to be felt in 1978 from the hand of Deng Xiaoping. This study explains the structural reforms that were implemented which provoked a powerful economic growth, causing that the PRC shifts from a middle power to the status of major regional power and then to a world power. In that period, the policy used was expansive, allowing the national economic consolidation. Since then, the PRC began a policy of integration into the world economy that received its final push with the accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001.Taking into account this change in the economic development model of the PRC, this study analyzes the PRC’s economy and foreign trade and its role in the development of world trade before and after its accession to the WTO in 2001. For this purpose was also assessed qualitatively the causes of admission to this international organization and the consequences that has occurred nationally and internationally, proving that the PRC’s economy has grown significantly, as well as its economic influence in the international economies. In broad terms, this turning point in the PRC’s foreign trade police led the country in the searching of new business partners to diversify its economic and trade structure and ensure an enhanced market access to the international markets as well as those targeted as supplier markets.Therefore, this study outlines the PRC’s economic influence in Latin America and focuses on the increasingly important role that the PRC occupies in Colombia’s foreign trade; which is directly related to the importance that the PRC has acquired worldwide. The study assesses the bilateral relationship between the PRC and Colombia from 1991 to 2012 from a Colombian perspective by analyzing the political, economic, cultural and institutional factors affecting this relation; finding that the PRC is currently Colombia’s second trade partner. In this quantitative and qualitative comparative analysis was found that the PRC-Colombia bilateral trade has been in deficit for Colombia, highlighting that the trade balance has increased exponentially since the PRC’s accession to the WTO; both countries have signed more than twenty bilateral instruments through which is materialized the strengthening of relations between them in various fields; and the sectors that have most benefited from this trade were the hydrocarbons and minerals for Colombia and Machinery and equipment for the PRC.Finally, the study provides the achievements of the bilateral relationship, through the approval of different recent agreements that promote the trade of raw materials and agricultural products and the study of the feasibility of negotiating a Free Trade Agreement between both countries in the future; it also discusses the challenges in infrastructure that Colombia has to face to become a competitive export platform, suggests business opportunities for Colombia in the agro-industrial sector, in order to increase its market share in the Chinese market and present recommendations and strategies that will consolidate and sustain the development of the PRC-Colombia economic and political relationship. |
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