Latin America's Chinese new friend: Perceptions, impacts and challenges

• Autor(a) principal: Duarte, Paulo
• Data de Publicação: 2015
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.5/29104
• topic: Latin America; China; Relationship

This paper aims to contribute to increase knowledge about the impact of China’s growing presence in Latin America. Such presence, as we argue here, causes a mixture of positive and negative perceptions in the region, which cannot be considered a homogeneous whole. Thus, instead of a positive or a negative feeling widespread in the region vis-à-vis China, we postulate that it is the nature of the relationship that Beijing maintains with each Latin American country, which explains that different States in the region display different perceptions toward China. Complicating the chess of the perceptions there is a history of oil, natural gas and several ores, more or less abundant according to each state in the region, and some practices, eventually susceptible of criticism, intrinsically linked to the behaviour of the various Chinese groups and companies (State-owned and non-State) which operate in the region. Based on a qualitative method, via the hermeneutic analysis, we underline the drawbacks inherent to a ‘triangular’ conception of the China-Latin America-United States relations, ending with some geostrategic recommendations in order to improve cooperation in the region.