Press Mentions

Even if we’re not seeing the multi-billion dollar lending that we saw in the past, there are a lot of ... commercial banks and other financial institutions that are providing finance, either directly to Chinese companies or sometimes to Latin American companies, or even Latin American governments for specific projects.

It's all very well to talk about investment but US and European companies are shedding their assets in Latin America .... We have to create incentives for them to stay.

Hay varios mecanismos que China puede usar para introducir su moneda en distintos mercados; es un fenómeno regional, no algo exclusivo de Brasil y Argentina.

It was never going to be the case that China would pick up and leave.... It was always going to be that it would bide its time.

No hay un consenso en la región, desafortunadamente, de que la respuesta tiene que ser más estado de derecho, y no menos. En la región hay un vacío de liderazgo consistente en estos temas.

El lazo con Asunción tiene para Taipei 'una importancia simbólica crítica'... Estamos ante un grupo tan pequeño de aliados diplomáticos duraderos (para Taiwán) que perder más aún sería un golpe enorme, sobre todo después de la decisión de Honduras de hacer lo mismo. 

Los préstamos a los gobiernos fueron diseñados para ayudar a la entrada de las empresas chinas en Latinoamérica, cuando éstas tenían poca experiencia. Pero las empresas chinas están hoy extremadamente bien posicionadas en diversas industrias a lo large de la región. Estás empresas ahora pueden invertir por sí mismas o en alianza.

[la generación y distribución eléctrica] también forma parte de lo que China he denominado "nuevas infraestructuras", o industrias basadas en la innovación que están estrechamente vinculadas al propio desarrollo de China, que es de suma importancia para sus dirigentes.... Es difícil saber si el rápido crecimiento de la propiedad china de activos energéticos en partes de la región tiene una dimensión estratégica o no. Pero la creciente huella china en este sector aumenta sin duda la dependencia latinoamericana de las empresas estatales china en estas industrias.

We are seeing more and more capacity on the part of China to act as a viable alternative [to the West] and to develop diplomatic alliances that underscore that point ... The BRICS will support that objective, and Lula, as a founder of the group, will be inclined to reinforce that vision.

Failed development models across the region have favoured big mining and agricultural companies while neglecting small and medium-sized firms. Workers in this 'missing middle' of the economy have little choice but to go.

[I believe] that measuring Latin America’s leaders on a traditional political axis is outmoded. Instead of the left-right scale [...] it makes more sense to distinguish between democrats and authoritarians.

[Guatemala's decision to host a "Friends of Taiwan" summit] is an important symbolic gesture ... These countries still stand to gain economically speaking and in terms of development from partnership with Taiwan.

[Chinese-funded projects are] not always purely beneficial ... There are challenges associated with carrying out some of the projects that are announced.

There has been a reassessment both on the part of the Chinese government and within the banks themselves of how to do business [in the Latin America and Caribbean region] . . . Latin American and Caribbean nations are managing an increasingly challenging balance between measuring China's geopolitical and economic interests, their own needs and reactions from the United States . . . 

There was this sort of love affair with Lula that I'd never really seen - certainly not with any other Latin American presidents and few others (...) so [Lula's upcoming state visit to China] will be [viewed as] a bit of a homecoming and an effort to demonstrate that [the Sino-Brazilian] relationship is not only alive and well but thriving (...), he will be met with a lot of excitement.