Rare question and answer Xinhua Exclusive on China- Latam relations

Thank you Xinhua News. Please click here to access the article from Xinhua News.

Yang Wanming, director-general of the the Department of Latin American and Caribbean Affairs of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, exchanged views with chinanews.com readers online on Tuesday afternoon.

 

Yang Wanming, director-generalof the Department of Latin American and Caribbean Affairs of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, answers questions from chinanews.com readers online on Jan 17, 2012. [Photo/Chinanews.com]

 

Topic: China-Latin America cooperation in culture

Q: How do China and Latin America cooperate in the field of culture?

A: China has opened 32 Confucius institutes in Latin America, covering almost all Latin American countries. Both sides also send art troupes to visit one another and conduct people-to-people exchanges. Many Chinese people like their football, music and dances and engage in studying Spanish and Portuguese. Many Chinese books have also been translated into Spanish and sold in Latin America.

Topic: Cooperation in energy

Q: What’s the current situation with Sino-Latin American energy cooperation? Some people think China is plundering energy resources there and uses it as a way to curb the US.

A: China is trying to carry out comprehensive cooperation with Latin American countries and its efforts have been well welcomed by them. The cooperation not only benefits the two parties, but also contributes to global peace, stability and prosperity. It started late and is on a relatively small scale, but has been developing fast. China imported 20.73 million tons of crude oil from Latin American countries in 2010, which accounts for 8.7 percent of China’s total import in that year. Venezuela has become China’s 4th largest oil provider. The two parties will explore cooperation on new energy. It’s totally based on equality and mutual benefit and will do no harm to the third party.

Topic: US view on China-Latin America relationship

Q: The relationship between China and Latin American countries has developed so fast. What do you think of the feeling in the US to this?

A: In recent years, the independence of Latin American countries is growing and its economic growth momentum becomes more diverse than before.

The rapid development of China-Latin America relations is on the basis of mutual benefit and win-win for both sides and is within the needs of Latin American countries’ diversified diplomacy and development strategy.

It will not only benefit development of both, but also contribute to the world’s stability and development.

China and the US have already established a consultation mechanism on Latin-America, and through four different consultations, the two parties have enhanced their mutual trust on this issue.

And the US has repeatedly stressed in their consultations that strengthening relations between China and Latin American countries will be good for Latin-America’s stability and development.

Topic: Chinese workers kidnapped in Colombia

Q: It was reported that several Chinese employees were kidnapped in Colombia by unidentified armed militants. How are they now? Could you release some information about the rescue efforts?

A: Four Chinese workers were kidnapped by some unknown armed militants in Caquetá province in Colombia on June 8, 2011. We have urged the Colombia authority to spare no effort to carry on the rescue work under the premise of guaranteeing the safety of hostages. Since then, the Chinese embassy in Colombia has kept in close cooperation and contact with Colombia’s relevant departments. The rescue work has not finished yet, but the safety of the four hostages can be guaranteed. Chinese companies are facing more risks as they go global on a larger scale. We need to increase our political backup and diplomatic guarantee to them, strengthen the consular protection and safeguard their legitimate interests. Meanwhile we advise Chinese people in Latin America to improve their sense of safety and precaution.

Q: How about China-Mexico relations?

A: China and Mexico are both developing countries and are working at enhancing people’s living standards. They hold the same positions on many international issues and regularly cooperate on these..

China and Mexico have some trade friction over trade imbalance problems, but we hope both sides can deal with the problems reasonably and from a development point of view.

We hope both can take active measures to promote the diverse, comprehensive and healthy development of the two countries’ economic and trade relations.

February 14 marks the 40th anniversary of diplomatic relations between China and Mexico. We believe the relations can become more comprehensive, steadier and healthier with the two countries’ joint efforts in the future.

Q: Can you talk about the relationship between China and Brazil?

A: Brazil is one of the biggest countries in Latin America and one of the emerging powers in the region. The China-Brazil relationship is one of the most important between China and Latin America.

In recent years, the strategic partnership between China and Brazil has made considerable progress. They maintain a good momentum of high-level exchanges and the political mutual trust is deepened.

Their economical cooperation is also deepening constantly, which has brought tangible benefits to people of both countries. Bilateral trade volume exceeded $80 billion in 2011. Investment cooperation in finance, energy, steel, and machine manufacturing has also made great progress, and is expanding constantly.

China and Brazil have active exchanges in science, technology and culture as well.

The cooperation in the fields of Earth resource satellites, agricultural technology and aviation is progressing continuously. And the cooperation in culture and education is also very close.

China’s Confucius Institute Headquarters opened two Confucius Institutes and a Confucius school in Brazil and Brazil’s important media institutions have sent many journalists to work in China.

China and Brazil are both developing countries and have broad and consistent interests on major international issues. The Chinese government attaches great importance to relations with Brazil and believes the two countries’ cooperation in various fields will make great progress with their joint efforts.

 

Jim Rogers on Euro, Investment Strategy, MF Global – BLOOMBERG

Dec. 7 (Bloomberg) — Jim Rogers, chairman of Rogers Holdings, talks about his investment strategy and the collapse of MF Global Holdings Ltd. Rogers, speaking with Tom Keene on Bloomberg Television’s “Surveillance Midday,” also discusses the outlook for Brazil. (Source: Bloomberg)

Click here to watch the video direct from Bloomberg

Commentary: U.S. needs bigger thinking on Latin America

ANDRES OPPENHEIMER of the Miami Herald and CNN Español discusses US Foreign Policy towards Latin America

Note the author of this blog (me) does not always agree with what Mr. Oppenheimer says, but his article no less merits a quick read.  Some major points which any reader giving this a quick skim should note –>

1/ The Obama Administration has left the post of Head Latin American affairs vacant for 5 months.  So much for making good on promises back in 2008 to forge closer ties with the region… Big disappointment here, but not any worse or better than the disappointment / let down his predecessor Bush Jr also produced.  It seems the last President to care at all about the region was Clinton who did more than organize summits… He laid the foundation for FTA’s with countries in the region via NAFTA

2/ Obama did not visit Brazil, the growing powerhouse and member of the BRIC club until 3 years into his presidency. When he did visit, he received nothing but criticism for going through with the official visit between the heads of state of the Western Hemisphere’s two largest economies… because the visit happened to coincide with start of Western Military efforts in Libya. For the US media which pointed the finger at Obama, shame on you, the President does not physically need to be in the United States to be “Commander and Chief,” especially for an internationally organized, and initially French lead military mission.  For Obama, shame on you too! It took you three years to visit Brazil!  I think for Brazilians this is an obvious insult, but even for the rest of South America (and Latin America as a whole), Obama, Bush Jr. and the United States… well… Latin America is feeling a bit as if they are being ignored.  One thing is certain – China is not ignoring Latin America, nor is India, Russia or even small players like Singapore which is investing to expand the Panama Canal.  

3/ As Ray Walser,  Senior Policy Analyst for Latin America at The Heritage Foundation very appropriately points in a 2009 publication “U.S Policy toward Latin America in 2009 and Beyond”  From 1996 to 2006, total U.S. merchandise trade with Latin America grew by 139percent, compared to 96 percent for Asia and 95 percent for the European Union. In 2006, the U.S. exported $223 billion worth of goods to Latin American consumers(compared with $55 billion to China). Fifty-one percent of U.S. energy imports originate from Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia, and Brazil.

Excerpt from Oppenheimer’s article –>

U.S. diplomatic ties with Latin America, which have been in limbo for months, got a small boost last week when President Barack Obama nominated Roberta Jacobson as top State Department official in charge of Latin American affairs. But that alone will not do much to revert the gradual loss of U.S. clout in the region.

Granted, the career diplomat gets high marks from almost everybody in Washington’s small world of Latin American affairs specialists. Unlike her predecessor Arturo Valenzuela, a political appointee whose nomination in 2009 was blocked for several months by Conservative republicans, the Senate is expected to easily confirm her nomination.

Among the most urgent issues Jacobson would have to deal with would be the long-stalled U.S. ratification of the free trade deals with Colombia and Panama, the escalating violence in Mexico, and the April 2012, 34-country Summit of the Americas in Colombia.

On a wider spectrum, she would have to find new ways to improve ties with the region at a time when China has eclipsed much of the previous U.S. economic influence in South America’s commodity producing countries.

Click here to read Oppenheimer’s full article via the Kansas City Star

Global gloom places Latin America on alert – Financial Times

Interesting article written by John Paul Rathbone, Latin America editor of the Financial Times.

Every day Luis Castilla, Peru’s finance minister, says he lights a candle and “prays that China won’t crash”.

His prayers are echoed by many in a region that remains one of the world economy’s few bright spots. South America’s commodity-rich economies grew 5 per cent in the first half of this year. Last year, these new motors of the world economy added half a percentage point to global output.

But slowing Asian demand and plunging commodity prices have raised the spectre that South America, having largely escaped the 2008-09 Great Recession, may not be so lucky this time around.

Main point = Potential new financial crisis in the “Developed World” + slow down in China = Scared Latinos

Click here to read the full article direct from the Financial Times

ECLAC Sees Favorable Conditions for L.America-China Relations

The current economic and trade conditions in the Latin American and Caribbean region are highly favorable to furthering its trade and investment relations with China and the Asia-Pacific, a UN official said Friday.

“China has become a strategic trade partner for Latin America and the Caribbean, and there are many opportunities to achieve export and investment agreements in fields such as mining, engineering, agriculture, infrastructure, science and technology,” said Alicia Barcena, executive secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and Caribbean (ECLAC).

Barcena made the remarks while presenting a report titled “The People’s Republic of China and Latin America and the Caribbean: Towards a new phase in the economic and trade link” to mark Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping’s visit to the region.

The report says China is the main destination of Brazilian and Chilean exports and the second largest for Costa Rica, Cuba, Peru and Venezuela, but the region’s export basket to China remains centered on raw materials.

“It is possible and necessary to advance on trade diversification, the creation of a trade alliance between the Asia-Pacific and Latin America and the Caribbean, and to increase investment between both parties and enhance cooperation in innovation, education, science and technology,” Barcena said.

Click here to read the full article direct from http://english.cri.cn

Real picture of Sino-Latin America ties [China Daily US Edition]

The author is deputy editor of China Daily US edition. He can be reached at chenweihua@chinadaily.com.cn

The Western media continually criticizes China’s role in Latin America as being “neocolonial” and claims it has an “insatiable demand for commodities”, so I was keen to observe the people’s attitude toward China during my trip to the region recently.

Judging from the enthusiasm for China displayed by government officials, businessmen, academics and ordinary people in Chile, the picture presented by the Western media has been seriously distorted.

At the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, chiefs and experts attributed the fast trade and investment growth from China as a key factor for Latin America not only surviving, but thriving during the global financial crisis.

The same message was heard from top Chilean officials at the 5th annual meeting of the Chile China Business Council, which drew some 500 government officials and business people.

It is true that commodities are an important part of the trade between China and Latin America. However, that trade benefits not only China, but also Latin America and the rest of the world.

By being the world’s manufacturing workshop, China has paid a high environmental cost. Just half a century ago, that job was done in most of today’s developed countries when they were the global manufacturing center.

Many developed countries have an insatiable demand for China’s rare earth and, of course, the country’s cheap labor. But this never seems to bother the Western media.

In fact, China and Latin America are quickly diversifying and elevating their trade and investment as witnessed by the host of agreements signed by China and Cuba, Uruguay and Chile in the past few days.

China has already become Chile’s largest trade partner. Chinese businesses are increasing their presence in the South America country. The billboards on Santiago streets by automaker BYD and appliance firm Haier, and the Chinese businessmen who do trade, operate malls and run convenience stores are proof of China’s presence.

Both countries share a priority in development. Chile aspires to become a developed country and China wants to become a xiaokang (well-off ) society.

Chilean President Sabastian Pinera made constant reminders that the two countries are very close despite the geographical distance between them.

The mood among the ordinary people I met in Chile was also favorable to China. I have never heard the word “Welcome” as often as I did in Chile. Ordinary Chileans I met in cafes, museums, parks in Santiago and Pablo Neruda’s colorful and hilly neighborhood in historic Valparaiso greeted me with “Welcome to Chile”.

What Pinera said was true. China and Chile are very close. In South America, Chile was the first country to recognize China’s market economy status, the first to sign a free trade agreement with China, the first to establish diplomatic ties with China and the first to support China’s WTO accession.

Of course, China and Latin American countries, all belong to the developing world and are going to compete with each other. But we all know that competition is a good thing and there is no need to distort the picture simply because of competition.

Latin American nations are independent countries and they are no one’s backyard. For China and Chile, they are really neighbor countries separated only by the Pacific. You can literally fly from Beijing to Santiago without passing over any other country.

Self-sufficient food policy benefits world – China Daily

Early this year, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) issued a special alert warning that North China, the country’s wheat basket, was suffering from a severe winter drought that could devastate China’s wheat harvest, putting further pressure on world wheat prices that have been rising rapidly in recent years.

Underlying the FAO’s warning is the central message that should China lose its winter wheat crop, it will go to the international grain market to make up any shortfall. The sudden entry of such a huge buyer could certainly rock the international food markets.

However, the FAO’s warning is a false alarm. First, because for the past six to seven years, China has lost around 7 percent of its annual grain output to various forms of natural disasters, and yet its annual grain production has been on the rise. In 2010 China’s total grain production was a historical record of 546 million tons. Second, successive years of bumper grain harvests have enabled China to build up a large grain reserve of more than 40 percent of its annual consumption – much higher than the world average of around 17-18 percent. The growth in grain productivity for the past three decades has been very impressive, particularly since 2004.

China’s population accounts for 21 percent of the world’s total population, but the country is endowed with only about 9 percent of the world’s arable land. Feeding such a vast nation, with such an unfavorable man-land ratio, has always been a great challenge for China’s rulers, past and present. Hence the old Chinese adage: “An economy without strong agriculture is fragile, and a country without sufficient grain will be chaotic”.
Even in modern times it remains an enormous task for the Chinese government to ensure food security. China’s serious food crisis between 1959-1962 is still fresh in the collective memory of the present generation of Chinese leadership. Therefore, China has always taken food security very seriously, much more so than many other countries. Food security in China basically means “food self-sufficiency”, with the bottom line set at 95 percent of domestic grain supply.

Such a stringent definition of food security naturally puts an additional burden on the government. The problem is aggravated by the fact that for the past three decades, China’s total population increased from 960 million in 1978 to 1.3 billion in 2009, while arable land, the total sown area, increased only marginally by 5.4 percent.

Worse still, the total sown area devoted to food crops declined substantially from 80 percent in 1978 to just 64 percent in 2009, mainly because, with economic prosperity and rising incomes, farmers were growing more lucrative non-grain commercial crops.

Accordingly, China has come to depend heavily on increasing the output per unit of land area to maintain its food security. This, in turn, needs continual technological progress, such as using hybrids or other high-yielding varieties, and increasing intensification of cultivation with greater use of modern inputs like chemical fertilizers and pesticide.

The trouble is that barring the use of genetically modified (GM) crops, the productivity growth potential of traditional technological progress based on modern seeds and modern inputs has started to slow down everywhere in the world. Widespread use of modern inputs of industrial origins also inflicts long-term ecological damage.

Rapid economic and social changes have further worked against food production. Industrialization and urbanization in China as elsewhere inevitably spell agricultural decline. Farming is also becoming economically and socially unattractive to young people. As in other densely populated East Asian economies with severe land constraints, food production in China has also become an increasingly high-cost business.

With China having achieved successful industrial take-off, economic theory suggests that it should have a stronger comparative advantage to export labor-intensive manufactured products to the United States in exchange for its cheaper food produced by land-extensive farming. In other words, China should scale down its existing high level of food self-sufficiency and let international trade take care of any shortfalls, much as Japan has done.

However, the world has a stake in China’s strong food security. If China followed the economic theory of comparative advantage by relying on international trade to achieve its food security, its import requirement would seriously destabilize the international grain market and drive up world inflation.

It is therefore in the favor of the whole world for China to rigidly adhere to its basic tenet of maintaining strong food self-sufficiency.

The author is director of the East Asian Institute, Singapore.

China-Brazil; a clash of cultures

Celio Lin, 29, sat by the cash register of his family’s busy Chinese restaurant complaining about the Brazilian staff, while his mother checked on the line cooks by tugging on their coats and attentively peeking into pots of soup and noodles.

Img: Courtesy of Wikicommons

“Brazilians want vacations for I-don’t-know-what, they want a day off for I-don’t-know-what, they want to go to the beach, to relax,” Lin said. “The beach is obviously pleasant, but if you send a Chinese man to the beach, he’ll go there to sell something!”

A tip of my hat to AP’s Sao Paulo office for writing a very interesting piece on the on-going process of Chinese and Brazilians learning how to do business with one another.

The article does a great job of highlighting the major differences in the expectations of workers, managers, and executives from both Chinese and Brazilian companies operating in one another economy.

More than 2 years after your author personally embarked on his journey to learn Chinese, build bridges between China and South America, I can personally attest that many of the observations in this article are true… but I stop short of painting such a negative picture as the article does — almost suggesting it is impossible for the two cultures to begin to learn how to work together more efficiently and understand one another.

Here’s an excerpt from AP’s article. You can click here, or the link at the end of the excerpt to read the article in its entirety direct from AP News.

Culture clash complicates China’s Brazil push
(AP) – 13 hours ago

SAO PAULO (AP) — Stocking shelves in a Chinese grocery store, Thiago warned that he didn’t want to be caught chatting during working hours. Within seconds, however, the Brazilian unleashed a pent-up flood of complaints about the owners, who lingered just beyond hearing distance.

“My bosses have never heard of a day off,” said the 20-year-old, who would only allow his first name to be used, for fear of losing his job. “Vacations? Forget it. They pay well and they pay for extra hours, but they don’t understand that some things are more important to Brazilians than money.

“I’ve seen many workers walk in, see the Chinese way of doing things, and quit the very same day.”

Such cross-cultural tensions have become a stumbling block in an otherwise meteoric rise in business ties between China and Brazil, two of the world’s fastest-growing economies.

Chinese companies’ direct investment in Brazil jumped to $17 billion last year, nearly 60 times the investment the previous year, according to SOBEET, a Brazilian economic think tank. At the same time, more Chinese companies are hiring local workers rather than following their old practices of bringing in Chinese laborers.

Click here to read the full article, direct from AP

Brazil-China-US; a soap opera made in heaven

Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff toasts with China's President Hu Jintao after a signing ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, April 12, 2011. Credit: Reuters/Jason Lee

Last month when US President Obama visited Brazil, a lot was expected from the visit in that he was meant to focus on ways to work with Brazil to counter China’s control of the RMB, which both seem is undervauled.  The visit fell way short of expectations, and was even lambasted by most US media as a unnecessary and untimely trip in light of the crisis in the middle-east the US actions in Libya.

Last week, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff visited China, and it now seems Brazil interests are leaning more towards cooperation with China than the US.  Rousseff’s trip is being hailed as a major success both in China and back in Brazil.  She left with promises and new contracts for China to purchase billions of dollars of Brazilian made industrial goods–not soy beans or iron ore.

Where will Brazil’s interests eventually lean — the US or China?  Is there a way for the three to work together in a productive, positive way for the better of all?  Or will Brazil eventually have to choose? Between the US, who has long ignored it rising clout and is considered by most Brazilians to not respect the country as much as it should?  Or will it choose choose China, which for better or worse is more interested in Brazil’s raw natural resources than it is in buying its industrial goods like jets?  Furthermore, if Brazil wants to speed up development of its high tech and industrial sectors–it’s number one competitor will come from China, not the US…?

This is a foreign policy soap opera in the making people.

I suggest all those interested in the topic, go over to Reuters and read a great analysis published today about this all.

BBC Documentary: “The Chinese Are Coming” (Part 1 and 2)

Part 3 and 4 will be uploaded tomorrow.

All courtesy of the BBC