Sino- LatAm ties’ geopolitical aim exaggerated

Chinese President Xi Jinping is finishing his third trip to Latin America, which included visits to Ecuador, Peru and Chile, as well as the 24th APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting in Lima, Peru. When Xi visited Ecuador, the two countries decided to lift their bilateral relations to comprehensive strategic partnership. With the cooperation of China and Latin America going deeper and becoming firmer, the two regions will face new opportunities and challenges.

China and Latin America have strong complementarity in the economic and trade fields. They need each other for their own development.

Latin America can meet China’s demand for natural resources while China can provide Latin America with imperative funds, technology, equipment, highly skilled workers and so on. For example, as Ecuador faces a power shortage, China is helping it build hydropower stations to turn Ecuador from a power importing country to a power exporting one.

Nevertheless, China also has some problems to address in its cooperation with Latin America. First, political and social unrest in some countries of Latin America have negative impacts on bilateral cooperation. For example, the impeachment and removal of Brazil’s expresident Dilma Rousseff has affected a series of cooperation projects between China and Brazil.

Second, China needs to pay more attention to environmental issues in its Latin American investments. Some Chinese projects there face boycotts from local residents who think these projects will damage their environment. The Twin Ocean Railroad, which goes through the Amazon rainforest and the Andes mountains, has aroused worries among some environmental activists about the possible destruction of the rainforest and impact on the living environment of the aboriginal people.

Third, China has not paid enough attention to the livelihood of local residents in carrying out projects. Especially when it comes to major projects, China needs to focus more on local people’s livelihood so that it can obtain more support from locals.

With good momentum in its future cooperation with Latin America, there are things that China should give more attention to to facilitate bilateral ties.

As development in many Latin- American countries comes in a pendulum fashion with many ups and downs, China needs to assess risks in advance so that it can be prepared whenever turmoil happens.

Besides, with Latin- American countries’ political and economic development, their needs and demands are constantly changing.

China needs to take this into consideration and make appropriate adjustments according to the changes. Moreover, Sino- Latin American cooperation has to be promoted in a steady manner with no rush.

Some Western countries think that China intensifies its cooperation with Latin America – the so- called “backyard” of the US – for geopolitical ends. China can ignore this nonsense in terms of economics and trade since the two sides are highly complementary economically and well- matched for cooperation. Since the West has also been expanding its cooperation with Latin America in the framework of the World Trade Organization, like China does, China shouldn’t be singled out.

The Free Trade Area of the Asia- Pacific ( FTAAP), which China proposed, is an inevitable trend. As the Asia- Pacific re- gion becomes increasingly important and is playing a leading role in the world economy, the FTAAP will benefit a wide range of countries and China will play an important role in it.

Nevertheless, China needs to take a precautious stance in political and military cooperation with Latin America. The lessons of the Soviet Union should be remembered.

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union increased its military presence in Latin America to confront the US, which ultimately harmed itself and even the world. Therefore, China needs to take into account the US and avoid being involved in military competition with the US in Latin America.

In the wake of Xi’s latest trip to Latin America, China will continue to increase its voice and influence in this region. It can be expected that this tour will see new agreements, closer relations and more frequent cultural exchanges between China and other Latin- American countries.