The co-editors, respectively associated with the University of Sydney and the Metropolitan Autonomous University in Mexico City, have assembled fifteen pithy chapters by Latin American specialists. A first section is devoted to a macro view of the region as a whole; the second considers individual states. Unfortunately, space limitations preclude completely summarizing the many fine chapters, so this review will highlight a selection of the works included in this volume.
José Luis León-Manríquez's contribution distinguishes between trajectory A counties, which have benefited from increasing exports of their commodities to China, and trajectory B states, which have suffered deleterious effects from increasing Chinese competitiveness. Membership in either is not static: it is possible for countries to move from one to another. Given the comparatively weaker performance of Latin American exports such as soy and crude oil, plus the growing volume of manufactured goods imported from the PRC, León-Manríquez anticipates that several countries will move closer to trajectory B. One does not have to be a believer in dependency theory, he notes, to conclude that trajectory A is under stress. The author emphasizes that his intention is not to criticize the PRC as an imperialistic power, but rather to underline the enduring structural shortcomings of Latin America's engagement with the world economy. By contrast, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences researcher Jiang Shixue argues that Beijing's initiatives in Latin America reflect its commitment to building South-South ties, and that this relationship differs fundamentally from neo-colonialism in that it is based on genuine cooperation and mutual respect. Though acknowledging difficulties in the relationship, economists Javier Santiso and Rolando Avendano, like León-Manríquez, place much of the onus on Latin American states, with their poor and inappropriate infrastructures.
Individual country studies tend to strike a more somber note. Cuba is a notable exception to this, with authors Mao Xianglin, Carlos Alzugaray Treto, Liu Weiguang, and Adrian Hearn describing relationships that have been established in the tourism, biomedical, and medical care areas as more genuinely cooperative. Assuming that U.S. president Barack Obama's initiative for warmer ties with the Castro government moves forward, they are optimistic that a trilateral relationship is possible.
Rodrigo Tavares Maciel and Dani K. Nedal's more nuanced chapter on Sino-Brazilian relations notes that the linking of the two countries in the acronym BRIC risks overstating their mutual complementarities and understating their differences. Reports and analyses refer to increasing trade and investment, the signing of memoranda of understanding and agreements, and the establishment of mechanisms for dialogue as if they constitute clear indicators of progress. Agreements that are not implemented, working groups that do not meet, summits that yield no results, and dialogue mechanisms that actually do not function at all are erroneously construed as evidence of a bilateral relationship. Ironically, the exception to this excessively rosy picture, the authors state, is the highly publicized challenges the PRC poses to Brazilian industrial sectors. Here, the negative aspects of Sino-Brazilian trade are exaggerated to the point that they obscure its positive aspects.
As for the role that the United States takes toward Latin America in general, National Defense University professor Cynthia Watson predicts that, notwithstanding optimism about new directions in Washington's policy, systemic constraints are likely to inhibit the Obama administration's ability to effect substantive change. The problems that confronted the Bush administration remain and will continue to be a factor.
Latin American countries also face constraints on deepening their relations with the PRC as leverage against the U.S. Even President Hugo Chávez, easily the most enthusiastically pro-China Latin leader, must face the reality that most of the world's few facilities capable of processing Venezuelan heavy crude oil are in the United States. Moreover, in an environment where time is money, it takes only three to seven days to ship oil to the U.S., compared to between thirty to forty days to China. Chávez must also be mindful of the financial health of the large network of indirectly state-owned CITCO filling stations in the U.S.
Several Latin American states have reported adverse impacts on their environments from Chinese-invested projects, labor difficulties in Chinese-owned factories, and an influx of Chinese laborers that does little to help domestic unemployment problems. It remains to be seen whether these are teething problems that will be assuaged with joint efforts or become serious barriers to the South-South cooperation that both sides favor.
Inevitably, when experts in one area analyze its relations with another, small errors occur. Sinologists may consider describing Zhongnanhai as the equivalent of the White House a stretch too far, as is reference to China's 2012 “elections;” Beijing does not portray Taiwan as a rogue state but as a province of China and hence no state at all; and the unemployment figure for the PRC's college graduates was already a serious problem before the world financial crisis due to an overly-rapid expansion of the country's higher education system in previous years. This said, readers interested in this important new aspect of the PRC's foreign policy will learn much.
