In an article that appeared in DW (Deutsche Welle) they expand on the significance of the recent trip and the meetings with leaders in other countries in Latin America.
After the BRICS summit and a visit to Brazil, China’s President Xi Jinping embarked on a tour of Argentina, Venezuela and Cuba in a bid to boost ties and gain clout in the region.
The trip – Xi’s second to Latin America since taking office as head of state last year – follows a BRICS summit in the northeastern Brazilian seaside city of Fortaleza, where the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa agreed to create a development bank and a crisis reserve fund seen as rivals to Western-dominated financial institutions.
The visit also comes as China’s trade with Latin America has surged more than 20-fold from 12.6 billion USD in 2000 to 261.6 billion USD last year. As Beijing remains on the lookout for resources to power its growth Xi will pay state visits to Argentina – a key source of soybeans for China, oil-supplier Venezuela and long-time political ally Cuba, from July 18 to 23.
But while Xi’s trip is focused mainly on closing business deals to satisfy China’s demand for new resources, Beijing’s economic and political support to these countries will come at a price, warns Víctor M. Mijares, professor of International Relations at the Simon Bolivar University in Caracas and Visiting Research Fellow at the GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies in Hamburg, in a DW interview.
DW: Xi’s trip to Argentina, Venezuela and Cuba comes after the BRICS summit and the state visit to Brazil, how important is this trip?
Victor M. Mijares: It is very significant, not only for the host countries, but also for China as an emerging global power. China has a massive economy. It doesn’t only have the world’s largest population, but it is also the largest goods trader. However, it still lags behind the US in terms of projecting its military might. For instance, the US administration of President Barack Obama made the biggest naval shift to the Western Pacific since World War II: the so-called pivot to Asia.
The fact that Beijing remains a secondary military force vis-a-vis the United States and its Asian allies is one reason why the Chinese government is seeking to break free of what it views as a siege operation by the US. At the same time, China is looking for raw materials, new sources of energy, and seeking to keep its dominant position in world markets by deepening economic ties with Latin America. Each of the three Latin American countries in Xi’s upcoming tour of the region is of special interest to China.
China is Cuba’s number-two economic partner after Venezuela. What is Havana expecting from its longtime Communist ally?
Havana was long isolated from Beijing due to the Sino-Soviet tensions during the Cold War. Following the collapse of the USSR, a new horizon of opportunities appeared for both single-party states. More recently, Raúl Castro openly declared himself a follower of the Chinese model, thus stating that a) Havana supports China’s political rise, and b) Cuba’s elite wants to evolve from an orthodox Marxist-Leninist state into a Deng Xiaoping-inspired state with a unique and strong ruling party on the one side, but also with the ability to introduce and implement key economic reforms.
As for China, the Xi-led government is looking with interest at the soft and controlled transition of power in Cuba. But at the same time it also has an eye on geopolitics and trade. With the projected expansion of the Panama Canal, Cuba’s medium and long-term importance in terms of trade will grow.
Trade between China and Venezuela amounted to more than 19 billion USD with both countries signing several development agreements in the recent past. Are China’s interests in Caracas purely economic?
Venezuela is currently China’s number one debtor in Latin America, and Beijing’s top supplier of oil in the region, with 6 percent of Chinese imports coming from the South American country. While Beijing and Caracas normalized bilateral ties forty years ago, China’s economic rise coincided with the interest of the late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez in a multipolar world and his quest for autonomy through the diversification of economic, military and diplomatic ties.