Abstract
Latin America is witnessing seismic shifts on the horizon. After a century of hegemonic presence of the Colossus of the North, the region has become increasingly relevant and a strategic area for China’s revived global economic, geopolitical, and diplomatic overtures, particularly in the last twenty years. Though much is still to unfold, particularly insofar as the rising rivalry between to the two most important economic powers in the world today, Latin America will certainly be an important part of these historical dynamics. But if the region is becoming increasingly important in regional, hemisphere and global disputes, to understand on-going and prospective events, one must remember that Chinese-Latin American relations have a long history of their own and though these have intensified in the recent decades, they are ground on important historical roots put in place before the rise of the United States in the Western hemisphere. Setting the stage for this book, the present chapter critically reviews the historical trajectory of interactions between China and Latin America in order to provide the main contours capable of illuminating the thematic and country-based analyses offered in the ensuing chapters in this much-needed volume.
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Notes
- 1.
A classic piece on this Johnson, C., 1970. Communist China and Latin America, 1959-1967, New York: Columbia University Press. A more recent and insightful analysis, based on personal accounts and cultural history elements, is offered by Rothwell, M., 2013. Transpacific Revolutionaries: The Chinese Revolutions in Latin America, New York: Routledge. See also: Ferry, M.M., 2000. China as Utopia: Visions of the Chinese Cultural Revolution in Latin America, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, vol. 12, no.2. pp. 236–269.
- 2.
Details can be found in Shixue, J., 2008. The Chinese Foreign Policy Perspective, pp. 30–33.
- 3.
Details of the meeting can be found at: http://www.beltandroadforum.org/english/n100/2019/0426/c22-1253.html.
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Ioris, R.R., Cepik, M. (2023). History: The Long Trajectory of a Relationship yet to Be Fulfilled. In: Schneider, A., Teixeira, A.G. (eds) China, Latin America, and the Global Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18026-2_2
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