ABSTRACT

This book assesses the political, economic and geopolitical dynamics that China’s presence has initiated throughout Latin America and the Caribbean between 2008 and 2020.

Written by experts across three continents, contributions to this edited volume explore the bilateral relations that China has developed with almost all Latin American and Caribbean countries, charting both the benefits they have brought and the problems that these relations have created for local actors. The book analyses the emergence of new forms of "dependence", considers issues such as the existence of a deindustrialization phenomenon throughout Latin America and ultimately questions whether China and the United States are engaged in a zero-sum game in the region. It also investigates challenges that the densification of the web of China’s relations and exchanges with Latin America and the Caribbean countries pose; not only to the United States and European countries, as traditional partners of these states, but also to Latin American regionalism.

Including an extensive set of case studies and local, regional and global-level analysis, China-Latin America and the Caribbean provides an empirically rich resource for students and scholars of Chinese foreign and economic policy, Latin America, the Caribbean and wider geopolitics.

chapter |9 pages

China in LAC since 2008

New transformative political, economic and geopolitical dynamics

part I|85 pages

China-Latin American and the Caribbean relationships

chapter 1|13 pages

The opportunities and challenges of the BRI in Latin America

A view from China

chapter 2|18 pages

Latin America’s current socioeconomic relationship with China

Conditions and challenges. The case for China’s overseas foreign direct investment in Latin America

chapter 3|12 pages

The People’s Republic of China’s South-South relations with the Mercosur countries

Regionalism at issue facing the win-win principle

part II|73 pages

Case studies

part III|60 pages

Case studies

chapter 12|19 pages

The rise of China in Panama under Varela (2014–2019)

A new Latin-American pivot of the Silk Road or a diplomatic ‘tour de valse’?

chapter 13|15 pages

Geopolitics in Central America

China and El Salvador in the 21st century