En la ciudad de Pekín, tuvo lugar el Primer Congreso Mundial de Clásicos liderado por el Ministerio de Educación de la República Popular China y del Ministerio de Cultura de la República de Grecia. El Congreso tuvo una sesión introductoria de alto nivel con grandes personalidades políticas y culturales, para luego en 8 sesiones paralelas abocadas a diferentes áreas temáticas.

La prestigiosa Universidad de Sichuan estuvo a cargo de la Sesión Paralela No. IV y le correspondió esa casa de enseñanza superior determinó el contenido y la escogencia de los expositores para tratar el tema de “Clásicos y el Aprendizaje Mutuo entre Civilizaciones”.

El 8 de noviembre 2024, Velia Govaere, investigadora de OCEX, estuvo a cargo del cierre de este programa con la temática de “Chinese trade and cooperation as a pathway to alleviate Latin American´s struggles”, que causó gran interés en el público presente y que se comparte a los lectores de OCEX en su versión original en inglés. La ponencia preparada para este foro fue traducida del inglés al chino-mandarín y fue publicada a través de la Oficina de Prensa de la Academia de Ciencias Sociales de la República Popular China. Se ofrece a nuestros lectores la versión original en inglés.

"Chinese trade and cooperation as a pathway to alleviate Latin American´s struggles
Velia Govaere-UNED

In its cultural history, Latin America had never experienced respite at the arrival of a culture from overseas. Since colonial times, Latin America has been beset with pain. The European colonialists arrived with the bible in one hand and the sword in the other. Ideologies were always offered as rationalization for subjugation. "Encomienda" was the Spanish name for a barbaric exchange where the indigenous population surrendered their freedom in exchange for accepting the culture of the Catholic faith. Religious ideology in return for slavery. As absurd as it may seem, or perhaps not, this is how Latin America learned to view with suspicion foreign offers. Until China arrived.

Eduardo Galeano recounted what he called "the open veins of Latin America". Colonial oppression, as Galeano rightly said, left open wounds and other forms of national humiliation replaced independence with neo-colonialism. The processes of national self-determination were interrupted, carried out only halfway, always threatened with setbacks.

From oppressive colonial structures arose neocolonial oligarchies enhanced by dictatorships. In the Cold War environment, democracy did not even reach Latin America, because the United States, heir to colonial hegemony, assumed that social justice was a geopolitical danger. Hence the bloody military tyrannies under their aegis. How could the seeds of violence not germinate in lands fertilized by despair? Abandonment, disease, hunger and inequality continue to run in these open veins.

The overcoming of a world divided into ideological blocs brought to Latin America political forms of greater democratic content. An interconnected and globalized world opened windows of opportunity to overcome social contradictions and productive backwardness, which in the last 30 years allowed for a certain political stability, moderate economic growth and minimal poverty reduction in Latin America.

However, the reality of the situation is that the nations of Latin America are still far below their potential. Separated even within their national borders by geographic barriers and poor infrastructure, they were not able to take advantage of their enormous resources and shared language and cultural unity to promote comprehensive economic development. Until China came along.

Only an understanding of the Latin American dreams, many times unfulfilled, would allow us to appreciate in its proper dimension the significance of the civilizing encounter with the People's Republic of China. Without ideologies and without impositions of any kind other than reciprocal benefit, Chinese trade and investment assumed a decisive role in Latin American´s economies. The sustained growth of the Chinese economy meant a permanent flow of resources derived from its ever-growing demand for commodities and from its systemic source of investments. This relationship opened business opportunities, diversified the origin and destination of Latin American trade and mitigated trade dependence on its traditional markets, North America and Europe.

That mutually beneficial scenario received with enthusiasm China's invitation to join its Belt and Road Initiative which came with sources of financing and investment programs in one of the most pressing needs of Latin American national and intercontinental development: physical infrastructure and connectivity.

This is one of the major components of the turning point in history. In Germany, Chancellor Olaf Scholz called it a fundamental “turning point of the era”, underlining the end of unipolar hegemony. In China, in a more positive way, President Xi Jinping called it a “New Era”, a promising context of opportunities, also filled with the inevitable risks associated with change.

This dialectic of progress is always accompanied by vested interests that feel themselves challenged and the return to the past remains a permanent threat. History never walks a straight line. The war in Ukraine points this out. The neocolonial chapter is not over, and the world still lives under the Damocles sword of division into blocs and military confrontation, which threatens, once again, the end of civilization.

Gramsci used to say that the old world is dying while the new one is slow to be born and that in this chiaroscuro are born the monsters. An internationally conducive period for progress is coming to an end. Unfortunately, the countries of Latin America did not manage to take full advantage of the democratic bonus, and the commercial bonanza of that period did not result in the overcoming of their structural problems. Then came China.

It is reassuring to see China's universal vocation to compose and build understanding and to consider as its greatest interest, even national, the hegemony of harmony and the peaceful coexistence of people as a structural condition for trade.

Latin America is squarely in the middle of these contradictory paradigms. There are no national situations of progress that cannot revert to misery. We are transitory nations in search of snatched dreams. In each country there are gaps, imbalances, asymmetries, but also all the potential offered by a continent culturally twinned by language, native traditions and the vocation of unity left by the colonial past. But these potentialities rest on the physical linkage of an infrastructure that does not yet exist, which would bring us closer to each other and would open the doors to the Pacific and to China.

Although very briefly, I would like to outline some particularly representative countries.

I will start by talking about my country, Costa Rica, a very small country but emblematic of the destinies that the continent would like to see. A country of peace in a traditionally violent region. A democratic country grafted into a continent of dictatorships. A country without an army in a world of wars. A green country in a withering planet.

It is a very small country and has its own idiosyncrasy. Never an uprising in 70 years, never a coup d'état. And yet, the international reality imposes itself and I must confess that Costa Rica is walking the dismal path of the crisis of political representation of the rest of Latin America. This is important. Without political representation, democracy is a mockery. A true ideological fabrication.

That is why it is decisive to understand how Costa Rica was naturally the first Central American nation to establish diplomatic relations with the People's Republic in all political, economic and cooperative spheres. It was also the first in its region to establish an FTA with China.

Also, and this is sad, it is in the middle of all that entails the commercial and technological confrontation between China and the United States. Hence, Costa Rica finds itself between conflicting currents and the opportunity of its participation in the Belt and Road initiative opens a space for it to set the course of its national interests above pressures.

Will it do so? This is the dilemma that other Latin American countries also face: to decide their own narrative. Nothing simple, in the current context, but it is a real challenge, which in the end will be determined by the synthesis of two opposing signs: the understanding of the transcendence of being in a new era and the acquired reflexes of the past.

In South America, Chile is an emblematic paradigm. Its progress cohabits with its social and economic asymmetries. It is an important and willing partner of China. Its extractive and agricultural complementarity with China has been linked to the awareness of the Chilean ruling class to take advantage of this relationship to cement the added value of its exports and receive support in the creation of its own technological capabilities. Its President, Gabriel Boric, has recently said, referring to the relationship model with the Chinese companies that won the bidding for Lithium extraction under preferential conditions, and I quote: “We are not going to limit ourselves only to the extraction of non-metallic minerals, but we are also going to create value chains and transfer knowledge”. End of quote. This Chilean position fully corresponds to China's approach to shared-benefit exchange with its partners.

Brazil is another illustration of the complementarity of its trade and investment relationship with China, with which it recently celebrated 50 years of diplomatic ties. Since 2003, relations with China have been boosted with the coming into power of Ignacio Lula da Silva. China became Brazil's main trading partner, and the resources generated by its growing trade with China were decisive in Brazil's massive reduction of poverty.

With Lula's return to power in 2023, Brazil became more geopolitically involved in international processes as a strategic partner of China and is linked to all kinds of political, commercial, financial and technological initiatives. Along with China, Brazil is a founding member of the BRICS+, where Dilma Rouseff, former president of Brazil, presides the New Development Bank of the BRICS. Brazil is, by far, the largest Latin American exporter to China. In the area of foreign direct investment, Brazil has been the 4th destination of worldwide Chinese investment. The relationship between Brazil and China is a decisive component of the new era and both countries are involved in promoting world peace.

Peru is, in the region, a case of extreme political instability. But that, however, has not prevented the deepening of its relations with China. It is one of the two South American countries that, together with Chile, has an FTA with China and has boldly assumed the opportunities offered by the Belt and Road Initiative. At the center of the west coast of South America, Peru occupies a strategic position not only for its own trade with China, but also as a possible regional Hub. With a Chinese investment of more than US$ 3 billion, the Chancay mega-port, 80 kilometers north of Lima, has become the flagship of Chinese investment in the whole region.

At the present juncture, Chinese trade and cooperation is a pathway to alleviate Latin American struggles. All political elites in the region cannot fail to understand that the Chinese miracle is a true paradigm of economic growth with social equity. The Belt and Road Initiative is becoming a new parameter of mutually beneficial relations, where for the first time a world power demonstrates that cooperation and trade are not contradictory to respectful and harmonious treatment. This is and has been China's policy. Latin America is part of this tradition that promotes peace, progress and the right of people to write their own narrative of history.

Thank you very much.”