During Xi Jinping’s government, Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) has played an important role in providing political capital and spaces of greater influence in the region in favor of China relative to the United States.
Particularly important factors have been the sustained growth of the Chinese economy as a demand for Latin American exportable products, the regional reception of Chinese foreign direct investment, productive partnerships in the manufacturing and services sectors and Chinese financing for infrastructure works, among others.
Under Xi Jinping, China’s strategy towards the region has been consistent and persistent. China’s proactive attitude towards globalization and global free trade brings the region closer to its sphere of interests.
As expressed by President Xi Jinping, China’s aspirations to build a “less asymmetric globalization”, foster “mutual international cooperation” and promote the construction of a “common destiny community for humanity” coincide with Latino interests and values. Americans.
Since Xi’s rise to power, China’s trajectory as an emerging power has evolved under the paradigm of the “Chinese dream” of restoration, development and modernity for the middle of this century.
At the political level, this horizon serves to consolidate the presidential figure as the ultimate leader and center of the main decisions on public policies.
At the economic level, the vision of a restored China promotes the reconversion of the national productive apparatus through active policies of scientific and technological development, as well as the projection of its military power to the region and the world.
The transformation of contemporary China
Throughout this trajectory, past and present, presidential leadership has been and remains unchallenged.
A leadership built on a normative reengineering of the party statutes that allows Xi to remain in power indefinitely, thus ending the institutional arrangements and interfacial balances within the Communist Party of China (CCP) established by Deng Xiaoping at the dawn of the reform process .
The arguments presented to confirm the centrality of its figure as “core” (hexin) are the need to guarantee internal stability and ensure governance in times of growing internal and external tensions (read conflict with the United States), sustaining the anti-corruption campaign as a key instrument to ensure party discipline, expand state participation in the national economy, persist in building technological power, promote military modernization plans to ensure the country’s defense against external threats and protect neighboring maritime areas considered by China to be under its sovereignty (South China Sea).
Internally, Xi’s leadership has been characterized by abandoning the prevailing style of “democratic centralism”, reviving a discourse based on the ideological supremacy of Marxism-Leninism as the party’s political guide, the rejection of Western values, human rights standards or human rights. pro-democratic forms of political organization, allusions present in speeches and pronouncements aimed at political cadres, officers, the Armed Forces, businessmen and society in general.
Externally, the adoption of assertive positions by Xi shows characteristics of militarization of Chinese foreign policy in the region, less conciliatory positions on sensitive issues such as reunification with Taiwan under the pro-independence government of the Democratic Progressive Party (PDP) or the democratization of Hong Kong, increased military activity in the South China Sea, persistent border tensions with India and escalating tensions (political, commercial and military) with the US.
While the human rights situation of ethnic minorities like the Uighurs, or doubts about China’s responsibility for starting the Covid pandemic have eroded its international image, a mix of “wolf diplomacy” and “vaccination diplomacy” has mitigated the negative impacts on its soft power, repositioning the country as a promoter of the “universalization” of vaccines, considering them a “global public good”.
In this context, in the post-Trump era and under President Biden, US “bipartisan efforts” to contain China persist.
The strategy is multifaceted: neutralize Chinese efforts to reshape the “old institutions” inherited from the 20th century world order, contain their military expansion in the South China Sea and the Indo-Pacific, sustain their advantages in high-tech areas, reaffirm alliances with Asian partners (coalitions between democracies), prevent Chinese cyber espionage and mitigate the bilateral trade deficit.
Faced with an unstable world, China and Latin America and the Caribbean in general are weighing the mutual advantages and disadvantages of an approach that raises suspicions in Washington.
United States reluctant
The incorporation of Latin American countries in China’s global connectivity plans under the global partnership approach (Obor/BRI) and their integration with the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank are lines of action encouraged under the chairmanship of Xi.
In this context, the US, with a more conservative and militaristic profile, is reluctant to consent to the expansion of China’s presence in LAC and aspires to rebuild trust and recover lost regional spaces of influence.
Without renouncing the historical principles of action in the international system, a powerful China in the 21st century could only aspire to modify a world order that was inherited in much of the 20th century.
China’s empathy with LAC enables governments to open formal and informal diplomatic channels, encourages business activism, the development of academic studies and greater mutual understanding.
As was the case during the Cold War, despite US caution, the perception of China as a “regional development partner” prevails and presupposes the future densification of a Sino-Latin American cooperation agenda.
Column initially published on Redcaem’s website
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