Did you hear that China and Latin America are getting married in 2015?

01/08/2015 

bbc.com

Many governments of Latin America and the Caribbean are in Beijing this week meeting with President Xi Jinping to try and deepen their relationship.  While China has been allied with several Latin American countries they are now trying to take it to another level.

CELAC (community of 33 Latin American and Caribbean states) are coming up with a five-year plan for Chinese trade, investment and financial support in Latin America.  China wants to increase trade between the countries up to $500 billion and “forge a hand-in-hand community of common destiny” and “consolidate the ever-lasting friendship.”  It’s believed that the United States will also try to re-establish connections and influence over Latin America and the Caribbean soon.  As we’ve seen recently with talks between Obama and Cuba, a change is coming.

China is no stranger to foreign trade negotiations.  They’ve had great success with Africa and are now aiming for better relationships and cooperation from Latin America. This will more than likely prove difficult however, since Latin America’s countries/states are very independent of each other and have a hard time thinking collectively. Luis Guillermo Solis, Costa Rican President and President of CELAC brought along close to 20 ministers and business advisors to discuss a billion dollar Chinese Refinery that can possibly benefit all of Central America. There is also representation from Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bahamas this week in Beijing. China is not only a trading partner but also a very big lending partner. Since 2009, China has lent Ecuador 9 billion dollars.  And Venezuela tops the charts at borrowing a whopping 50 billion dollars from China.

The Chinese are oiling and mining in our countries but environmentalists are not pleased with this as they’re destroying nature, including parts of the Amazon. These lucrative industries have the Chinese wanting to make a canal in Nicaragua that the people of Obrajuelo are protesting gainst. Tim Rogers breaks it down for us in layman’s terms in his article for Fusion, “Why China and Latin America are Tying the Knot in 2015”.  He writes that as China consumes more agricultural goods, they will need Latin America as much as Latin America needs China.  He writes hilariously, “So apparently it will be one of those marriages: China works all day to provide money, but when it comes home at the end of the day it expects Latin America to have food on the table.”