China’s Expansion into the Western Hemisphere: Implications for Latin America and the United States

Transcript

RIORDAN ROETT:  So as the US tries to manage the relationship with China, China in Latin America, while not a major policy question now, certainly is far more important now than it was some time ago. That has to be seen in the context of the second leg, US-Latin American relations, US-Western hemisphere relations which are, some would say in tatters. Some would say certainly on hold, other would say stalemated. I don’t hear many people saying that they’re either healthy or that they’re going to improve anytime soon given the continual rise of anti-American or at least not pro-American populist regimes who reject most of the initiatives coming out of Washington.

China-Latin America. Growing, small China is moving with great care. It’s upgrading its embassies. It is clearly following an important cultural exchange program. It clearly has diplomatic and geopolitical interests as well in the region and I think will continue to pursue those. How the United States views those relatively modest goals and objectives now are important, I think, to China. At least my impressions from my conversations in Beijing and Shanghai indicate that they are. It’s also a good sign, it will be a sign to the Chinese leadership how the United States, no matter who wins in November and becomes President in January deals with these kind of multilateral questions and concerns in which there is an increasing convergence, but I don’t want to push that too far, but an increasing convergence from a very low level between Latin America and China. Is that to be seen as inimical to United States interests, either with China or in Latin America that remains the important question for which we’re not going to have an answer for a couple of years, at least a decade.

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