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JanThe year 2018 marked the leapfrog development of the China-Latin America relations, with the bilateral exchanges in various fields having achieved fruitful results driven by high-level exchanges. The Second Ministerial Meeting of the China-CELAC Forum, which was held in Chile in early 2018, adopted major outcome documents such as the Special Statement on the Belt and Road Initiative, made the path of win-win cooperation clear, and opened up a new era for the overall cooperation between China and Latin America. Chinese President Xi Jinping paid state visits to Argentina and Panama by year-end 2018, which has vigorously upgraded the China-Argentina and China-Panama relations, and injected new impetus and vitality into the robust development of the China-Latin America relations in a new era. The China-Latin America relations witnessed a smooth beginning and a perfect ending in 2018. Though thousands of miles apart, the ship of the China-Latin America community with a shared future has set sail and become a new paradigm of the South-South cooperation.
China-Latin America cooperation breathes the same air and shares the common fate
The First Ministerial Meeting of the China-CELAC Forum was held in Beijing in early 2015, signaling that the China-Latin America relations have entered a new stage of the parallel development and mutual promotion between the bilateral cooperation and the overall cooperation. Latin America provides the strategic support for China’s sustainable growth through geographical space, natural endowment and cultural openness, while China’s Belt and Road Initiative offers new opportunities for economic and social development of Latin America. Regarding the achievements in the China-Latin America cooperation in 2018, it showcased a clear win-win trend of “breathing the same air and sharing the common fate”, which mainly manifests in three aspects as follows:
First, summit diplomacy further deepened mutual political trust. In recent years, the gradual strengthening of the China-Latin America economic and trade cooperation has increasingly upgraded the heat and intensity of the bilateral summit diplomacy, while the intensive summit diplomacy has continuously driven the high-level operation of the bilateral ties, thus forming a virtuous cycle and interaction. In 2018, eight heads of state in Latin America visited China, while Chinese President Xi Jinping also paid visits to Argentina and Panama. The summit diplomacy has played an irreplaceable role in consolidating traditional friendships and mutual political trust, and boosting economic and trade cooperation. With the deepening of mutual political trust, the number of Latin American countries who have established diplomatic relations with China has now reached 24. Following Panama in 2017, the Dominican Republic and El Salvador respectively established diplomatic relations with China in 2018. This has proved once again that the one-China principle is the overwhelming mainstream consensus of the international community, and that China has more friends and influence in Latin America.
Second, China’s Belt and Road Initiative comprehensively advanced overall China-Latin America cooperation. The establishment of the China-CELAC Forum mechanism in 2015 has laid out a mechanism path for the specific implementation of the overall China-Latin America cooperation. Over the past three years, China and Latin American countries have made joint efforts to build the basic framework of the forum, and put the forum on a sound running track. The Second Ministerial Meeting of the China-CELAC Forum, which took place in January 2018 in Santiago, capital of Chile, has embarked on a new era for the overall China-Latin America cooperation. China’s proposal of boosting the China-Latin America relations through the joint construction of the Belt and Road Initiative has sparked a strong response from various participating parties, on which the two sides achieved the political consensus. The meeting adopted three outcome documents including the Declaration of Santiago, Joint Action Plan of China-LAC Cooperation (Priority Areas) (2019-2021) and Special Statement on the Belt and Road Initiative. These documents mainly reflected the clear wills of the two sides to deepen cooperation and seek common development in the new stage. Notably, the Special Statement on the Belt and Road Initiative clarified via an official document for the first time that LAC countries are a natural extension of the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road as well as an indispensable international partner of the Belt and Road Initiative. Currently, 16 Latin American countries have signed the memorandums of understanding (MOU) on the Belt and Road cooperation with China, aiming at providing new opportunities for the China-Latin America cooperation to build a new situation with wider fields, a better structure, more power and better quality.
Last but not the least, economic and trade cooperation boosted the matchmaking of development strategies between Chinese and Latin America. The bilateral economic and trade cooperation between China and Latin American countries has constantly expanded and yielded tangible fruits over the past few years. Statistics show that the trade volume between China and Latin America approached $260 billion in 2017, with a year-on-year increase of 18.8%. Over one quarter of China’s imported agricultural products came from Latin America, making China the latter's second largest trading partner. The figure continued to grow in 2018, and is expected to hit another record high of over $270 billion. In 2017, the stock of foreign direct investment (FDI) by Chinese enterprises in Latin America totaled $387 billion, making Latin America the second largest destination of China’s overseas investment. In 2018, China’s FDI in Latin America continued to surge and reached $15.3 billion in the first half, up over 70% from a year ago. Amid the current political and economic situations in Europe and the U.S. and with the rise of de-globalization and trade protectionism, both China and Latin American countries have reiterated their commitment to multilateralism and free trade, opposed protectionism, and unanimously agreed to deepen the bilateral economic and political relations. At the Second Ministerial Meeting of the China-CELAC Forum, the Chinese side put forward suggestions on how to deepen the cooperation with the CELAC in five major sectors, namely building greater connectivity integrating land and ocean, fostering a grand market featuring openness and mutual benefit, building independent and advanced major industries, seize the great opportunity of innovation-driven growth, and conducting major exchanges featuring equality and mutual trust. In the Declaration of Santiago, both sides together vowed to promote shared development through innovation-driven cooperation, so as to achieve sustainable development and benefit the society.
China and Latin America work together to build a community with a shared future under the principles of mutual benefit and win-win cooperation
Since China joined the WTO in 2001, the China-Latin America relations have shifted from cumulative development to leapfrog development, and formed a new situation with all-around, multi-level, multi-disciplinary as well as official and civil development. In November 2016, the Chinese government issued the second China's Policy Paper on Latin America and the Caribbean, which clearly specified that China has been dedicated to building a new five-in-one pattern with sincerity and mutual trust in politics, win-win cooperation in economy and trade, mutual learning in culture, close collaboration in international affairs, and mutual promotion in overall cooperation and bilateral ties, and that the current and the next few years are a crucial period for China and Latin American countries to speed up the construction of the Belt and Road Initiative and reach the consensus on mutual understanding and joint construction. China and Latin American countries will follow the same aspiration and path to together build a community with a shared future in the future.
First, both parties will tackle internal and external challenges, and jointly implement the Belt and Road Initiative. From the perspective of the inside environment, 2018 marked a year of general elections in Latin American countries, with dozens of countries holding general elections successively. During the elections, the traditional old parties and ruling parties successively failed, creating conditions for the opposition and anti-formed parties to step onto the political arena. The restructuring of power was basically finished under the framework of the electoral procedures and the constitution, which in general went peacefully and smoothly. In 2019, the new governments of countries such as Brazil, Mexico and Colombia will significantly adjust their domestic and foreign policies, involving policies for China. Generally, the political ecology in Latin America presents a trend of the fall in the left wing and the rise in the right wing, with the right-wing parties in countries like Brazil, Argentina, Peru and Chile having successively gained power. No matter how the political ecology changes, the mutual benefit and win-win attributes of China-Latin America economic and trade cooperation will never be changed, and the Chinese side will always be a good friend and partner of Latin American countries and social development. From the perspective of the outside environment, the U.S. increased its efforts to interfere in the regional affairs of Latin America. While pointing its fingers at leftist countries such as Cuba and Venezuela, the U.S. also attempted to discredit the China-Latin America relations, and criticized that China is a “new imperial power” aiming at “seizing resources”. However, facts speak louder than words. The China-Latin America cooperation has brought about tangible benefits to the development of Latin American countries, which has been universally recognized by people of various Latin American countries. As China and Latin America are highly complementary in economy, China’s Belt and Road Initiative has been actively responded by Latin American countries, which is beneficial for the establishment of a closer economic partnership as well as an open global economic system.
Second, both parties will overcome development barriers, and strengthen industrial capacity cooperation. The insufficient stock and sluggish growth of infrastructure have become a barrier that blocks the sustainable economic development in Latin America, while China’s advantages in this sector will undoubtedly be able to help Latin America fill the wide gap in infrastructure that has troubled it for a while. Trade, investment and finance are three major drivers for the robust development of the China-Latin America relations, and the building of infrastructure becomes a new sector and growth point of China-Latin America cooperation. Besides, the “3×3” new model of industrial capacity cooperation will also become a priority of China-Latin America cooperation within the framework of the joint construction of the Belt and Road Initiative. The new model refers to the joint building of three channels in Latin America, including logistics, electric power and information, in a bid to achieve positive interactions among enterprises, the society and the government, and expand three financing channels, namely funds, credit and insurance. This new model has not only catered to the needs of Latin American countries for the development of the industry and infrastructure, but will also boost the transformation and upgrading of the economic structure in China, and realize the matchmaking of the development strategies between China and Latin American countries at higher levels.
Third, both parties will enhance people-to-people and cultural exchanges and mutual learning, and increase mutual understanding and recognition. Amity between people holds the key to the sound relations between states, so cementing the popular basis of the China-Latin America community with a shared future is a cornerstone that promotes the friendly relations between China and Latin America. The development of economic globalization and ICT has provided a good condition for China and Latin and America to resolve the differences in geography, culture and language. The two sides should make full use of respective abundant cultural and tourist resources so as to create more opportunities for intimate exchanges between people of both parties. China announced that more than 20 countries in Latin America have become the outbound travel destinations of Chinese people, and opened a few direct routes to Mexico, Cuba, Panama and so forth, which has significantly promoted the exchange between people of the two sides as well as the development of tourism. In cultural exchanges, Latin America has become an emerging region witnessing the fastest growth of the Confucius Institute worldwide. Currently, China has set up dozens of Confucius Institutes and Confucius Classrooms in Latin America, as more and more people in the region are keen on the Chinese language and Chinese culture. In the future, both parties will continue to expand friendly exchanges between various circles, such as legislative bodies, political parties, local areas, news media, academic institutions, civil groups and cultural and sports groups, and strengthen the dialogue and communication in governance and internal and external policies, thus continuously consolidating the social foundation of the China-Latin America relations.
To sum up, the friendly cooperation between China and Latin America was further strengthened in 2018. Under the guidance of the joint construction of the Belt and Road Initiative, the two sides have increasingly deepened the mutual political trust, further increased the scale and level of economic and trade cooperation, and continuously enhanced the popular basis, enabling the China-Latin America relations to maintain high-level development. The China-Latin America cooperation will pursue the same aspiration and path in the future, and seek new economic globalization proposals in the South-South cooperation under the principle of mutual benefit and win-win cooperation through the Belt and Road Initiative.
Cui Shoujun, Director of RUC Latin American Research Center, and Research Fellow of National Academy of Development and Strategy.
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