It is now more than a decade since the first academic studies of China's growing involvement in Latin America began to appear. Since then the literature has grown in parallel with the growth in economic relations, and these four books provide valuable additions to this body of work. Two are monographs by US authors who have been amongst the leading US academics writing on Sino-Latin American relations. One is a collection of papers co-edited by the Director of the China and Latin America programme at the Inter-American Dialogue, one of the most influential think tanks in the US that follows China's relations with Latin America. The fourth book is the only contribution by a Chinese academic but is based on a PhD thesis written at a US university.
Kevin Gallagher's The China Triangle provides an overview of economic relations between China and Latin America, targeted at a general reader but drawing on an extensive body of research by the author and his collaborators, as well as by other researchers. The book provides a macro perspective focusing on trade, foreign direct investment (FDI) and Chinese finance. It documents the growing Chinese involvement in the region since the turn of the century, covering the period of the ‘China boom’ and the subsequent slowdown in growth both in China and Latin America. Gallagher discusses some of the issues that he and others have analysed in earlier work including the primarisation of Latin American exports, deindustrialisation, and the displacement of Latin American manufactured exports by Chinese competition. He draws on the Inter-American Dialogue's China–Latin America Finance Database, that he developed with Margaret Myers, to document the extent of Chinese lending to the region. The book also reports on studies of the environmental impacts of China from a project that Gallagher led at Boston University (Rebecca Ray, Kevin Gallagher, Andrés Lopez and Cynthia Sanborn (eds.), China and Sustainable Development in Latin America: The Social and Environmental Dimension, Anthem Press, 2017).
Gallagher provides a balanced view of China's involvement in the region, arguing that it is neither an angel nor a demon. He is well aware of some of the negative economic impacts of China on Latin American manufacturing, and indeed has made major contributions to the literature himself. He also documents examples of the negative environmental impacts of Chinese companies. However he points out that China is not the only culprit in this regard and that there are also examples of positive behaviour, including the contribution that Chinese firms are making in terms of renewable energy in the region. Many of the negative impacts that are identified can be laid at the door of Latin American governments, whether in terms of the lack of enforcement of environmental regulation or the failure to take advantage of the financial windfalls that came with the ‘China boom’.
The title of the book is perhaps slightly misleading. The China Triangle refers to the triangular relationship between China, the United States and Latin America; however, this is not a major focus of the book, which deals mainly with the bilateral relationship between China and Latin America and deals with the role of the United States only towards the end.
R. Evan Ellis has also written extensively on Sino-Latin American relations and his book is a follow-up to his earlier monograph (China in Latin America: The Whats and Wherefores, Lynne Rienner, 2009). His focus is on a relatively recent development that emerged only towards the end of the last decade, namely the growing involvement of Chinese companies ‘on the ground’ in Latin America. His central thesis is that this marks a new stage which will have a significant impact on Sino-Latin American relations and has important implications for the United States. It will make it more difficult for the Chinese government to maintain its policy of non-interference in the internal affairs of Latin American countries as its companies and citizens become more exposed to the effects of the policies of those countries’ governments. As far as the United States is concerned, the deeper level of Chinese engagement in the region is likely to increase the perception that this poses a threat to US interests, even though the expansion of Chinese companies is primarily commercially motivated.
Part 1 of China on the Ground in Latin America documents the growing involvement of Chinese companies in four main sectors: natural resources; loan-backed construction; manufacturing; and services (including telecoms, electricity, logistics and banking). Each chapter (apart from the one on manufacturing, which is organised by industry) provides details of major investments and projects involving Chinese firms by host country. Part 2 identifies the challenges that these new relations pose for the companies themselves and for the Chinese government. Ellis distinguishes between the challenges involved in entering Latin America and those that arise from the day-to-day operation of companies once established there. He also discusses the impact on Chinese communities in the region, some of which long predate the recent expansion of economic relations. This is particularly welcome since the economic literature often ignores the presence of these communities.
The book provides a wealth of detail on the numerous Chinese companies operating in Latin America and is an invaluable resource for researchers wishing to provide examples of particular types of corporate involvement or the conflicts in which Chinese companies have been engaged. The empirical evidence comes mainly from media reports and, as the author admits: ‘There is definitely a need for rigorous analyses applying quantitative and other methodologies to the cases described herein, but this is not that book’ (p. xi, emphasis in the original). The problem with this approach is that it makes it impossible to contextualise the examples that are offered. The sheer number of Chinese firms with operations in Latin America discussed in the book gives the impression of a great wave of Chinese investment in the region. However, even though there has undoubtedly been a growth in Chinese investment in the region, China lags some way behind both the United States and the European Union as an investor, and, if the Caribbean tax havens are excluded, only a very minor share of all Chinese outward investment is in Latin America.
The edited collection by Margaret Myers and Carol Wise provides a range of papers by US and Latin American scholars which includes both general studies of the region as a whole and more specific case studies of individual countries (Brazil, Peru) or sub-regions (Central America, the Andean region). The papers provide a good illustration of the variety of relations between China and Latin America. Papers by Cynthia Sanborn and Victoria Chonn Ching, and by Adam Chimienti and Benjamin Creutzfeldt, focus on the involvement of China in the extractive industries, while Guo Jie and Margaret Myers, and Mariano Turzi, analyse the impact of Chinese trade and investment on the agricultural sector. Financial flows are covered by Kevin Gallagher and Amos Irwin, who analyse lending by the Chinese policy banks, and Barbara Stallings, who discusses Chinese aid. Taken together the chapters also illustrate the differences in relations with China within the region and the way in which these play out at the national level.
Several of the papers serve to dispel some of the myths that have grown up around China's expansion in Latin America and elsewhere in the developing world. The chapter by Creutzfeldt challenges the notion of a monolithic China with a coherent strategic interest in Latin America, while Gallagher and Irwin argue that the expansion of the Chinese policy banks in the region is primarily commercially rather than politically motivated. The paper by Jie and Myers shows that China has not been engaged in a major ‘land grab’ in Latin America and that many of the examples that have been used to illustrate such claims have not in fact materialised.
The final volume, by Yanran Xu, is particularly interesting since it comes from a Chinese academic. There are still relatively few works on Sino-Latin American relations by Chinese authors available in English. The book covers China's strategic partnerships with four Latin American countries – Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela – with a particular focus on oil diplomacy. The latter is rather odd, given that – of the four countries studied – oil is a central aspect of China's relations only with Venezuela. In the case of Brazil, for example, oil is much less important in terms of its relations with China than iron ore or soybeans, although this is not very evident from the chapter on that Latin American nation.
In practice, the body of the book consists of four chapters that provide an overview of Chinese relations with each of the case study countries covering both political and economic relations and including a section on oil diplomacy. These are based on secondary sources and provide little by way of new information. Given the origins of the book as a PhD thesis, it is surprising that there is not more original research, for example through interviews with key informants in the foreign policy establishments in China or Latin America, or with oil company executives. Further, although the author claims to have consulted sources in English, Chinese and Spanish, virtually all those cited in the book are in English. It is a pity that an opportunity to bring the work of Chinese scholars on Sino-Latin American relations to those who do not read Chinese was missed.
Each of these books makes a contribution to the growing body of literature on Sino-Latin American relations. The China Triangle is highly recommended as a very readable introduction to the subject based on the latest research. Although rather less readable because of the mass of detail that it contains, China on the Ground in Latin America provides a wealth of information on Chinese companies in the region. The edited volume by Myers and Wise is a useful addition to earlier collections of papers such as Alex Fernandez-Gilberto and Barbara Hogenboom's edited volume Latin America Facing China: South–South Relations beyond the Washington Consensus (Berghahn Books, 2010), and Adrian Hearn and José Luis León-Manríquez's collection China Engages Latin America: Tracing the Trajectory (Lynne Rienner, 2011). Finally I would hope that the publication of China's Strategic Partnerships in Latin America will be followed by more Chinese authors publishing studies in English on their country's relations with Latin America.
Taken together the books provide evidence that, although relations between China and Latin America are not a zero-sum game, Latin America could have obtained more benefit from its relations with China. Concerns about the pattern of trade in which Latin America specialises in primary products are real and remain an issue despite the growth of other forms of relations. Indeed they have been accentuated by the fall in commodity prices in recent years. Chinese FDI is still mainly of the resource-seeking variety, and although there are some grandiose infrastructure projects in which China is involved, the most dramatic being the proposed canal through Nicaragua, Chinese companies are far less involved in the region than in Africa. In a number of Latin American countries, the manufacturing sector has been negatively affected by Chinese competition both in the domestic market and in export markets. Although there has been some Chinese investment in manufacturing, this remains quite limited.
Despite such concerns, the authors are optimistic about the future of Sino-Latin American relations. Barring a major economic crisis in China, its economic significance for the region will continue to grow. How far this will translate into positive development in Latin America will to a large extent depend on the policies of the governments of the region.
