Building Development for a New Era: China's Infrastructure Projects in Latin America and the Caribbean
"China's increasing international presence in all imaginable fields continues to impress experts and the general public; the differences between the Trump administration and short-, medium-, and long-term policies of the Xi Jinping administration seem to further push China toward a more active global role. Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) are not an exception: China's role in the region has increased outstandingly, from language, culture, and economic exchange to bilateral, regional, and multilateral ties.
It is in this context of China's increasing global presence in LAC that this book makes a detailed contribution on its infrastructure projects in the region. Infrastructure projects–a topic that we have highlighted earlier (Dussel Peters and Armony 2017)–are the latest and most ambitious phases in the increasingly complex relationship between LAC and China; that is, the latest phase in a process that began with trade in the 1990s and continued with Chinese loans and outbound foreign direct investment (OFDI) since 2007-2008. Beginning in 2013, infrastructure projects have become a critical new phase. The recent Nineteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China reiterated the importance of infrastructure projects, such as the One Belt One Road Initiative, for China's global strategy. In what follows, infrastructure projects will be clearly differentiated from trade, financing, and OFDI, since they are mainly a service and the property of the respective infrastructure project belongs to the entity that initially requested the respective service."
—Introduction, Building Development for a New Era, p. ix
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Date Published
Wednesday, January 31, 2018