Chaufa - Giving the Opportunity
Chaufa - Giving the Opportunity
A new era in Argentina-China ties, Uruguay's president in Beijing, Taiwan's Caribbean allies talk UN, and donations to Guyana and CDEMA
Hi! Welcome to Chaufa, a China-Western Hemisphere Newsletter by CPSI.
Today’s Edition covers November 20 to November 26.
This Week’s Top 5 Stories:
Despite Argentina’s President-elect’s previous negative statements about the PRC, the Chinese government promised that it hopes to work with Javier Milei’s administration while also warning that “it would be a huge foreign policy mistake for Argentina to cut ties with major countries like China.” President Xi also sent Milei a congratulations letter, calling for continued cooperation.
Following his election, Milei has softened his rhetoric on China. He most recently suggested that he would downgrade, rather than cut, relations with Beijing.
Taiwan’s foreign ministry also congratulated Milei on his election, an unusual move for a country that doesn’t often congratulate new presidents in countries that don’t have close diplomatic relations.
Following President Lacalle Pou’s trip to Beijing to meet with Premier Li and President Xi, Uruguay and China upgraded ties to a “comprehensive strategic partnership” and issued a statement confirming that both sides hope to complete a bilateral free trade agreement (which could undermine Mercosur and upset Uruguay’s neighbors).
The UN ambassadors from Paraguay, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Belize traveled to Taipei, met with President Tsai, and helped “relevant ministries and agencies better understand the operations of the UN system.”
Taiwan’s few diplomatic allies often provide support for Taiwan at the United Nations, such as by writing letters petitioning Taiwan’s entry into UN-related organizations or raising Taiwan’s security concerns during the UN General Assembly.
The PRC government donated $100,000 to the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) to enhance its capacity “to respond to disaster relief, prevention, and reduction,” while CNOOC donated acupuncture and Chinese massage equipment to the Traditional Chinese Medicine Center at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation in Guyana.
CNOOC is one of China’s largest oil companies, and it currently has a 25% working interest in the Stabroek Block alongside Chevron (formerly Hess) and Exxon.
Dominica’s capital Roseau signed a sister city MOU with Jining City for the “development of smart cities, modern agriculture and agriculture technologies, and trade – with a specific focus on local products exported from Dominica to the China-Caribbean Centre.”
This the second sister city agreement for Roseau this week, with one signed a few days earlier with the city of Yiwu.
My Take
Lessons from labor protests in Peru
This week, local Peruvian labor unions announced a strike against Chinese mining company MMG at the Las Bambas mine. This is far from the first problem MMG has had with the local community – earlier this year, a number of protests had shut down the mine for months. Other Chinese companies have faced similar issues in the region, from Bolivia to Ecuador to Colombia.
There has long been a debate in the China-Latin America studies community over whether Chinese firms commit more labor abuses than their Western counterparts. Though both sides acknowledge Western abuses, scholars disagree whether and why Chinese firms are more prone to commit abuses. Generally, researchers have often found that troubles with Chinese investments tend to stem from the host country rather than just the Chinese firm.
One notable example of this argument was when Barbara Kotschwar and her coauthors in Americas Quarterly suggested that Chinese firms faced cultural shock when entering the Latin American market and may have committed more abuses at the beginning of their time in the region. In response, Kevin Gallagher and Amos Irwin argued that Chinese investments create just as many social (and environmental) disruptions as their Western counterparts.
Yet despite these disagreements, a couple of insights have become clear. First, Chinese firms have long had lower social protections at home than are common elsewhere, so their base expectations of how to treat local workers and the environment are lower than other companies. This caused more issues when Chinese companies started investing in the region, such as at the Shougang Peru iron mine that Kotschwar studied.
Second, Chinese companies have been on the ground in Latin America for over 30 years now, so companies have increasingly learned how to adapt to the local environment. As Katherine Bersch and Riitta-Ilona Koivumaeki found, Chinese firms also adapt to the local environment and raise or lower their standards as much as local governments allow.
This suggests that if countries in the region want to make sure that Chinese companies are not committing labor abuses, they will have to adjust their own laws and enforcement rather than just rely on high-quality standards from the PRC firms.
The Roundup
Politics and Society
The heads of the Chinese and Cuban legislative foreign affairs committees met virtually to discuss political and ideological cooperation.
The Nicaraguan National Assembly approved a Chinese loan for China Communication Construction Company’s construction of a solar plant in San Isidro, Matagalpa.
The PRC ambassador to Colombia visited Barranquilla on his first official trip outside of Bogota to discuss cultural and economic ties and to celebrate 100 years of the city’s Chinese community.
Investment, finance, and infrastructure
Honduran President Castro announced that China had donated $285 million to build new education centers across the country, while Tegucigalpa’s foreign minister met with the Chinese ambassador to discuss the deal and broader bilateral relations.
Construction of the Chinese-donated $40 million Ilopango water treatment plant in El Salvador is set to start construction in December.
An environmental impact assessment is delaying the installation of a Chinese-funded track at National Stadium.
Sinohydro delivered the $420 million El Sillar highway, which is supposed to be part of the long-term East-West Bi-Oceanic Corridor route, to the Bolivian government. (Xinhua)
Trade
Brazil and China held their 9th commercial and economic cooperation meeting, discussing a wide range of issues including tax reform, infrastructure investments, anti-dumping investigations, and WTO reform.
El Salvador’s agriculture minister and the local Chinese ambassador attended the graduation of a Chinese-sponsored agriculture workshop. (Prensa Latina)
Trinidad and Tobago’s leading petrochemical company, Proman, christened two new tankers in Guangzhou that had been built in China.
In a press conference, Grenada’s foreign minister revealed that he had discussed technical missions between the Chinese port of Qingdao and the Grenada Ports Authority (GPA), as well as agreements between Chinese universities and St. George’s University or the University of the West Indies (UWI).
Chinese refineries have paused buying Venezuelan oil as the country’s oil market faces new demand due to the Biden Administration’s sanctions relief.
Technology
Alibaba Cloud services recently entered the Mexican market after AMLO and President Xi met on APEC’s sidelines in San Francisco, while Huawei is expecting to open its third data center in Brazilearly next year, as well as new centers in Mexico and Chile.
Although the Costa Rican government had indirectly banned Chinese 5G providers, Huawei is reportedly planning to participate in the tender for the country’s 5G infrastructure.
The news comes as a former constitutional justice told a local news outlet that he thought the ban on Chinese equipment was unconstitutional.
Analysis and Opinion
Specifically looking at Chinese-built space facilities in Bolivia, Venezuela, Peru, and Argentina, The Washington Post reported on how China’s growing space program has raised alarm bells in Washington.
The New York Times reported that 24,000 Chinese migrants crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in 2023, which is more than all of the PRC citizens apprehended in the past 10 years combined.
Scott MacDonald writes for the Jamestown Foundation that greater China-Nicaragua cooperation “is further extending its reach into the strategic underbelly of the United States. For Nicaragua, the restoration of diplomatic ties with China serves the geopolitical needs of President Daniel Ortega in distancing his regime from the United States and softening the blow of sanctions.”
AFP published a piece on China’s growing influence in Central America as Taiwan’s diplomatic allies in the region dwindle.
That’s it for now! See you next week.
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