“China’s discourse on the new model of relations between the big powers and its relations with the US under Bush and Obama”, is an article published by Manuel de Jesús Rocha Pino (2018) in the Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. The author analyses China’s proposal to the United States in 2012 for defining a new model of relations between the big powers. In the Mexican journal Foro Internacional, Eduardo Tzili-Apango, Eduardo Palacios-Cabrera y Bernardo Mabire (2018) in their article “The Reactive Multilateralism in Central Asia before China and Russia”, explain how extraterritorial agents in Central Asia have given way to a reactive multilateralism which benefits China and Russia,who are trying to secure their energy resources and the necessary land connections with Europe.
On the other side of the continent, Dietmar Dirmoser published “The Great March of China towards the West” (“La Gran Marcha China hacia el Oeste”) in the Argentine journal Nueva Sociedad Democracia y Política en América Latina (2017), in which he refers to the simplicity with which China proposes such a transformational initiative. Also from Argentina, Marcos Cordeiro Pires and Luis Antonio Paulino (2017), in their article “Reflections on the Hegemony and International Politics of China: the Belt and Route Initiative” (“Reflexiones sobre la hegemonía y la política internacional de China: la iniciativa ‘Cinturón y Ruta”) in the Revista de Relaciones Internacionales, wrote about the strategy of peaceful development. They analysed the evolution of Chinese foreign policy from the beginning of the reform period and concluded that China seeks to create the means in order to reaffirm its pacifist and inclusivist intentions through an integrationist project like BRI. In Colombia Mariano Turzi published “Latin American Silk Road: China and The Nicaragua Canal” in the Revista de Relaciones Internacionales, Estrategia y Seguridad, (2017), in which he wrote on the current impact of a possible canal financed by China in Nicaragua. Also in Colombia, Dusan Praj and Juan Carlos Restrepo (2017), wrote a piece titled “The Geopolitics of Chinese reform” in the international relations journal, Estrategia y Seguridad, referring to the presence of super powers in the South China sea, the institutionalisation of the BRI initiative, but also pointed to the growing economic interdependence which will ensue in case China manages to get the levels of connectivity that it wants with the West. The book El camino al siglo del Pacífico. Las otras rutas de la seda del siglo XXI (The Road to the Pacific Century. The Other Silk Routes of the XXIst Century) by Eduardo Tzili-Apango, published by the Autonomous Metropolitan University of Mexico, is handy as far as understanding the origin of the new routes which help in explaining what the author calls, “The Century of the Pacific” i.e. the presence of China, Japan, the United States and Russia in the region. Other sources are multilateral reports from some banks and risk rating firms as well as special editions of journals and widely circulated newspapers.
“Relevance”, according to the Dictionary of the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language, is the quality of being convenient, appropriate or amenable to something. Analysing from different geographic and epistemological perspectives the offer that China extends to Latin America in 2018 in order to integrate us naturally to BRI according to its discourse, is a need that besides being relevant is appropriate. It is the right moment to ponder the emotional reactions of our leaders to this tempting offer, a consequence of the tedium and precaution of an international economic system and leaders who for decades have been indifferent to the social and economic consequences of their actions, and also on the tremendous gap our continent suffers in terms of infrastructure.
The novelty of this publication is due to the origin of the authors who are located at different segments of the Eurasian route and participants and actors in Latin America involved in recent and current debates on the relevance, efficacy and appropriateness of the megaprojects and their effects. From this approach to the problem, one can also infer the following: the corridors and their influence on the population and the land, the corridors and their relation with the foreign policy of nations, the corridors and their impact on regional stability and national security, BRI and the new dynamics of South-South Cooperation, BRI and the definition of active policies, in short an integral analysis of the phenomenon, the think tanks, critical discourse and its responsibility in the implementation of the initiative.
The research has a unifying thread: the local, in situ, interpretation of BRI and its relation to the concept of economic corridors. The aim is to serve as a proposed reference point for academia and decision makers in Latin America who have to fully discern the new functional geography, of a new physical reality, which will overcome national borders and traditional diplomacy through special connecting zones, nodes of competitive production and cities which, in some cases, work independent of domestic legislation, resulting in what Keller Easterling (2013),5 calls extra diplomacy in his global conferences, and others like Khanna (2014) term as mega globalization. The authors present special cases. The Turkish people and their famous construction firms do not feel the same way about the BRI initiative as do the Indians, the emulous of China in the region or the central Asian people who need roads in order to reach Europe. The subjects discussed at the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) on the implications of BRI are not the same as those discussed inside the African Economic Community. Latin America should seek its own integral answers to how it can connect to BRI or to other forms of global connectivity, with what objectives and megaprojects and in which places. Which are the places and regulatory frameworks and financial institutions for the realization of our interests, needs and territorial development?
The last stage of globalization and its moorings to the end of the Cold War has been a general, systematic and irrepressible trend. The main trigger was the elimination of trade barriers, so as to reduce transaction costs within and across borders. The transformation of the means of production, interdependence and the internationalization of the production chains has led to heretofore unseen improvements in the collective welfare of the Asian giants, for example, the prices of goods and services became much more accessible, the consumption patterns changed, inflationary trends were controlled, knowledge flows became rapid and efficient while innovation widened the welfare spectrum (John, 2019).
The trade and financial dynamics were tied to the institutions created in the framework of the international economic system dominated by the powers of that time –the United States and the rich countries of Europe- who were expanding their markets. This multilateralism might have brought a certain stability, but the system tended to defend the interests of developed countries and systematically undervalued the concerns of other members over the yawning gap between the rich and poor and the concentration of the economic power in a few players. In the 1980’s, the West observed how China transformed economically and was determined to become the greatest provider of goods and services on a global scale. The Western powers decided to strategically promote the progressive linkages of this country to the system especially through