Commentary

Harris claims to show that the Western academic literature and media coverage of relations between Latin America and China “is characterized by factual distortions, errors, facts taken out of context, important omissions, and the use of derogatory images and terminology” and “has all the characteristics of a planned smear campaign—slander, falsification, and vilification.” He presents an alternative picture in which China has been economically beneficial for the region and politically progressive in supporting left-leaning governments in their attempts to develop alternative postcapitalist societies.

For an article that makes claims about the way China’s involvement in Latin America is portrayed in the Western academic literature, this one has surprisingly few references to that literature. ¹ The only major academic study referred to is Kevin Gallagher and Roberto Porzecanski’s The Dragon in the Room: China and the Future of Latin American Industrialization (2010). Instead Harris relies mainly on media reports, blogs, and NGO web sites. This might be acceptable if he were only writing about media representation of China, but he very clearly makes the case that the academic literature has the same features. He gives the impression that the sources that he quotes either are academic sources or represent the views of academics.

His characterization of the limited academic literature that he does cite is distorted and takes statements out of context. For example, he uses a quotation from Gallagher and Porzecanski ‘s book that “China is an awakening monster that can eat us,” the words of a Nicaraguan CAFTA negotiator (which Harris fails to mention), as if it represented the views of the authors, although it is obviously intended to illustrate the fears being expressed by some in Latin America. He dismisses the book as presenting a threatening image of China (based on the picture of a rather small dragon on the cover) and claims that it promotes a post–Washington Consensus model of economic development. In fact it is a well-documented study in the ECLAC structuralist tradition and is critical of neoliberal policies in Latin America, which are compared unfavorably with Chinese development strategy.

He similarly distorts a short article in Finance and Development by Anthony Elson (2014) by focusing on Elson’s discussion of asymmetries in the economic relation between China and Latin America. This comes in a section of Elson’s paper entitled “Not All Good News” that follows a section not mentioned by Harris discussing the positive impact of China on the region. These asymmetries, both in the fact that economically China is more significant for Latin America than Latin America is for China and in terms of the content of trade, with China exporting increasingly sophisticated manufactures and importing resources from Latin America, is widely documented (see, e.g., Jenkins, 2012). It seems that any critical analysis of the impact of relations between China and Latin America is seen by Harris as evidence of Sinophobia.

What seems to arouse his ire particularly in the works of both Gallagher and Porzecanski and Elson is the use of the image of the Chinese dragon. He claims that “in Western cultures the dragon is usually regarded as a symbol of malevolence” (n. 2). The authority for this statement is TravelChinaGuide.com! As a Welshman, whose national symbol is the Red Dragon, I beg to differ. ²

Another term that Harris finds objectionable is “deindustrialization.” While the extent to which deindustrialization can be attributed to the expansion of China is an empirical question, the term itself is descriptive and can be defined in an objective way, as I show in my paper on Brazil in this issue. While orthodox economists may not consider deindustrialization a problem, it is quite a different matter to accuse those who refer to it of using loaded terminology.

Harris does make some valid points. It is true that much of the literature tends to treat China as a monolithic entity and does not recognize different Chinese interests in Latin America. Unfortunately, having made this point, his account of Sino–Latin American relations falls into the same trap. He also points to the increasingly interconnected nature of production and the role that China plays within global production networks. This does raise questions about the origin of products in a globalized world, although Harris presents no evidence of the significance of this in the case of trade between China and Latin America.

Harris’s own view of the economic relations between China and Latin America corresponds very closely to official Chinese discourse, which emphasizes the complementary nature of the two, based on their respective resource endowments. Although the article claims that “China’s leaders have been influenced by the Marxist theory of the international division of labor,” the “win-win” arguments that are presented are essentially the same as the neo-classical arguments found in a number of studies by the World Bank and the OECD, which play down the extent to which China competes with Latin America (see, e.g., Blázquez-Lidoy, Rodríguez, and Santiso, 2007, and Lederman, Olarreaga, and Perry, 2008).

Harris further claims that Chinese imports, far from competing with domestic production in Latin America, either replace imports from other countries or help raise the productivity of local firms by providing cheap inputs and capital goods. Clearly some imports from China do replace those from other countries, although Harris presents no evidence for this claim. ³ Also, although some of the imports from China are capital and intermediate goods, this does not mean that they do not compete with domestic production, particularly in countries such as Brazil and Argentina, where domestic industry has developed well beyond simply manufacturing consumer goods. While several East Asian economies are integrated into global production networks in such a way that their manufacturing sectors have benefited from China’s growing manufacturing capacity, Latin American countries have been totally marginal to such networks. ⁴

Most academic commentators on Sino–Latin American relations regard economic relations as the main driver and see political relations as following from these, but Harris claims that China has developed particularly strong links with left-wing governments in Latin America, particularly the ALBA countries. He fails, however, to point out that three of the ALBA group (Nicaragua, Saint Kitts, and Saint Vincent) recognize Taiwan and do not have diplomatic relations with the PRC. In fact, China has stuck to its policy of not interfering in the internal affairs of countries in Latin America and has been prepared to do business with countries irrespective of their political alignment. It has signed free-trade agreements with Chile, Peru, and Costa Rica, all of which also have free-trade agreements with the United States. The countries with which China has strategic partnerships in the region are Brazil (1993), Venezuela (2001), Mexico (2003), Argentina (2004), Peru (2008), and Chile (2012). What unites these countries is their economic significance for China and not their political alignment. While it is true that Argentina, Ecuador, and Venezuela, which have had difficulty in accessing international financial markets, account for the bulk of Chinese loans to the region, these countries have not received especially favorable terms from the China Development Bank (Gallagher, Irwin, and Koleski, 2012).

The view that China’s objective in the region is to challenge the hegemony of the United States is one that is common on the Republican right, and a suspicion of Chinese motives is also shared by “realist” U.S. political analysts (see Jenkins, 2010). It is surprising to find that Harris apparently shares this interpretation.

Harris’s article reproduces many of the features that he describes as characterizing a smear campaign. It does not engage with the vast majority of the academic literature that analyzes seriously both the positive and the negative impacts of China’s growth and integration with the global economy. It regards any critical analysis as evidence of “China bashing” and presents a rosy view of Sino–Latin American relations. Is the panda, an animal threatened with extinction and one that appears to find it difficult to reproduce, really the most appropriate representation of China’s role in Latin America?