What Xi Jinping Wants in Latin America
China is not interested in turbocharging the region’s industrial development. But neither are its investments seeking to challenge the US.
Keep the batteries, we’ll take the lithium.
Photographer: Rao Aimin/Xinhua via Getty Images
How worried should Washington be about China’s growing footprint in Latin America?
The new crop of left-leaning governments in the region are keen on it growing further, excited about the prospect that the Asian giant could provide a viable economic development path, one which offers the extra attraction of bypassing their old nemesis, the United States. “What Brazil wants to propose to China is that we need to build a hundred things,” President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said as he arrived in China some two weeks ago. As Brazil’s Finance Minister Fernando Haddad put it, the goal is to “reindustrialize Brazil in partnership with Chinese capital.”