ABSTRACT

In recent years the economic relations of Latin America (LA) and Asia have strengthened in an international framework in which Asia has become one of the most dynamic regions in the world, both because of the highs in its economic growth as well as for its greater participation in the international flow of goods and capital. Asia poses serious challenges and opportunities for Latin America that differ depending on the resource endowment and the productive structure of each subregion. In the case of South America, the wide variety of natural resources it possesses and the nature of its productive structure, concentrated on the production of goods based on natural resources, has rendered the relationship with the Asian countries as mainly complementary, turning the Southern Cone into an important provider of these goods for Asia, especially to China, and an attracting pole to investment projects that tend to exploit these resources. In the case of Mexico and Central America, the relationship with countries of similar resource endowments (Southeast Asia and China) is rather one of competition, especially in the production of goods intensive in the use of labour; a competition that goes beyond the domestic markets to the destination markets of their exports.