CGTN Europe interviewed Richard Lapper, Associate Fellow, Global Economy and Finance Department at Chatham House.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00President Xi Jinping has met Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on the sidelines of the China SELAC Forum.
00:07They signed a number of cooperation documents with both countries pledging to defend global free trade and multilateralism.
00:15President Lula is on a state visit to China.
00:18Richard Lappa is a writer specializing in Latin America and Associate Fellow of the Global Economy Department at Chatham House.
00:25I mean it's fairly significant in the sense that it marks a growing economic and political relationship between Latin America and China, Latin America and the Caribbean and China.
00:39It is important. China has become the biggest trading partner for several Latin American countries including the largest Brazil and that's been the case since 2009.
00:55These meetings started in 2015 so there have been four of them and they've, you know, each one, you know, China's still there.
01:03It's growing its influence and its involvement in the region and I think in particular at the moment given the difficulties the region's experiencing with the Trump administration,
01:16this is seen as being a welcome sign of support and, you know, an alternative source of funds.
01:24So do you think China will actually end up being the dominant trade and investment partner replacing the United States for the wider region?
01:32I think that seems to be an inevitable trend as things stand with the possibly the one exception of the northern countries of Mexico and Central America that are more integrative with the U.S. economy.
01:46But certainly for the commodity rich south of the region, you're looking at countries like China and Brazil.
01:54Sorry, you're looking at countries like Brazil and Chile and Peru where the output of agricultural products like soya, copper and iron ore is extremely important for China.
02:12And we're seeing, you know, steady increases in that trade.
02:18And President Xi has announced more money for Latin American economies promising to increase imports in the region.
02:25How much effect will that have?
02:27I think it's, you know, I mean, I think that the significant thing about this loan package, this funding package of nine billion dollars is that, you know, it clearly will facilitate Chinese imports.
02:44You know, the Chinese tend to offer more favorable terms to Latin American importers.
02:48It is less than was committed in the first of the CELAC meetings in 2015.
02:58It's about half as much.
03:00China's economy is slowing.
03:01There's less money available.
03:03And it is only available in one.
03:06So it is it is it is closely tied to, you know, Latin America has can only do certain things with this money.
03:14So, yeah, it is going to be, I think, primarily geared towards Chinese products.
03:21I want to ask you about something else which may well have a big impact on trade.
03:25This new bio oceanic route, which is nearly complete with the help of China.
03:30What will the significance of this be, do you think?
03:33Investment in infrastructure from China has been a theme of Chinese involvement in Latin America, you know, since the beginning of the century, really,
03:42when the when the relationships first starts to pick up, we've seen, you know, not just in in ports, which is is, you know,
03:50probably the most significant developments has been the developments, this Peruvian port, Chiang Kai, 10 billion dollar development.
03:57There's lots of little smaller ports in the Caribbean region.
04:00There's there have been very significant investments in the smaller Caribbean islands, such as Antigua.
04:10And there's also, I think, quite important Chinese involvement in energy.
04:15So in the Brazilian and Chinese and Chilean energy grids in green energy, China's been a big exporter of windmills, solar panels, things like that,
04:30that are allowing, you know, countries such as Brazil to build up their green energy potential.
04:35So I think that's all these things, hugely important.
04:39And, you know, China's moving into a space that, you know, you might have expected, you know,
04:47Latin America's more traditional partners to be more alert about.