The Adventures of Chester: China's Influence in Latin America

Bill Rice has done a great analysis of China's growing influence in Latin American and the economic and geopolitical underpinnings of those relationships. Check this out: By Dawn's Early Light: China's Moves in Panama. Here's one of his takeaways:

The Chinese, to grow their economy, require more natural resources than China has domestically. Securing metals and especially oil is vital to the long-term growth and modernization of the Chinese economy. China is seeking to obtain these supplies by increasing its good will with Latin American governments that have these resources, while minimizing Taiwan. Long-term Chinese goals will be to increase military contacts with these same nations to ultimately secure their economic interests.

Bill's right on the money here and I have two follow-up thoughts:

First, it seems that there is a danger in how one assigns agency and action to various state actors when considering moves like these. For example, if a US-based multi-national or international firm decides to move into a new market abroad, what role does the US government, the state itself, have in that move? Its activities and influences can vary: keeping markets open to American commerce, tax incentives, economic development trips, exchanges, other efforts, etc. But It seems that on the whole, the US does not necessarily have a centrally-planned or managed economy that it can direct in certain ways or to certain resources. On the other hand, China's economy might be far differently organized. The state may have a much greater say in how resources are moved around and where firms are "encouraged" to expand. For example of the sort of nexus between business, military, and state interests that seems to exist in China, but is very different in the US, see Chinese Generals and Their Fatal Distractions, a recent Strategypage article. Basically, I sometimes wonder about using the terms "China" and "the US" to describe actions taken by many different actors, some state-centered, some not, all varying in their roles, relationships to each other, and objectives. Don't get me wrong. I use the same constructs myself in describing international relations all the time. I have no doubt, as Bill states, that the Chinese state, and the US state, want to increase their influence in Latin America vis a vis each other. But I don't want the "transnational" or "subnational" or "intranational" aspects to be looked over.

Second point: One way that I recently discovered of thinking about the competing influences of the US and China all over the world is through the game of Go (via wikipedia). Whereas the US-USSR relationship might have best been analogized as a game of strategic chess, the US-China relationship seems much more similar to Go. Each side is carefully setting up relationships in places all over the globe. For every Latin American nation that China influences, Bush or Rumsfeld visit a Mongolia or a Kyrghizstan. Each state, US or China, has a web of interacting speres of influence, characterized in particular by economic relationships, military relationships, diplomatic relationships, the flows of trade among citizens any third-party state (to use a transnational metric), cultural infuence (to use another) and each of these influences could be similar to a single piece on the Go board. Over time, the influences of one side combine locally in one place to overcome the influences of the other side. Over even longer periods of time, the influences of each side become concentrated in certain areas, or, if one side doesn't carefully guard its influences by interlocking them carefuly with complementary ones, it will find itself losing in an absolute sense. In this way, whereas chess is about head-to-head military competition, Go is much more subltle. I think it applies to US-China competiton. The only thing not accounted for by this analogy is the possibility of cooperation between the two states in common goals. Go does not allow for this in its traditional rules. Neverthelss, I find it useful.

Posted by Chester on November 21, 2005 11:11 PM to The Adventures of Chester