Op-ed by José Cárdenas, China’s Great Leap Into Latin America, following China’s 20-year presence in our hemisphere,
The numbers are staggering. China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, and its bilateral trade with Latin America and the Caribbean has since skyrocketed, from $15 billion in 2001 to $288.9 billion in 2013 — an increase of almost 2000 percent. That number now represents 6 percent of China’s total foreign trade, an increase from 2.7 percent in 2000. (Some 13 percent of Latin America’s trade is now done with China, up from negligible levels in 2000.)
In the past decade, China’s two biggest development banks have provided $125 billion to Latin America — more than the combined total lending of the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank.
This is only the beginning, folks, since China wants to “double bilateral trade and to increase investment stock value by 150 percent over the next decade.”
How China is adapting to the region’s new governments as the CELAC falters makes for fascinating reading.
Background post from 2011:
CELAC: Chavez’s latest “alternative”
Yes China, go invest and sink billions of dollars into LATAM. Send your people in droves as immigrants. One day, when the right dictator comes along, all your property and money will be confiscated and your citizens will be driven back home as the inherent indigenous fear of colonialism and resentment of successful foreigners bubbles to the surface again and again.
After some experience with their new Chinese overlords, many Latinos will be saying the Yanquis by comparison were very benevolent. You wanted the Yanquis out, you got the Yanquis out.