China in Latin America book out

Finally, after a dozen China in Africas, here is a China in Latin America, written by R. Evan Ellis. His post as “professor at the Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies” made me wary, but, even though the book is based on the usual combination of newspaper accounts and interviews, it is in fact good. It has a wealth of country-by-country information that is exceedingly difficult to obtain elsewhere (unlike the now-considerable overlap of sources about Africa), which includes very useful brief descriptions of Chinese immigration and everything else you would expect (from trade and infrastructural projects to military cooperation and what he calls “intellectual infrastructure,” which includes the teaching of Chinese). One shortcoming here is that there is no separate discussion of development aid, even though Ellis does mention low-interest loans.

The book really does fill a gap. For instance, I have long known about the large and new Fujianese immigration to Argentina and the fact that these migrants run a lot of groceries, and have wanted to know whether this group has anything to do with infrastructure investments from China. Ellis tells me that it does not, yet. He also confirms that although Brazil has the largest number of Chinese, Chinese megaprojects here have been relatively insignficant (partly because of a lack of excitement about Chinese loans and labour) and there is no rush on the Chinese language, unlike in Chile (though this section is made less reliable by the fact that Ellis uses only Spanish and English sources, no Portuguese ones). His data in some cases go up to December 2008, so that he is already able to account for some of the effects of the recession. As of that date, it appears that the ambitious transcontinental rail and road projects in which Chinese companies and banks have been mooted as investors and contractors have not yet taken off.

The book is not led by a preconception of what China is doing in Latin America — perhaps because it is not so easy to have such preconceptions, unlike in Africa. This makes the continent all the more interesting as a case study. Indeed, Ellis details how the resource-shopping of Chinese mining and metallurgy companies in South America often takes the form of joint ventures that are not unidirectional; thus, Chilean-Chinese and Chilean-Brazilian joint ventures have announced plans to open smelters and fertilizer plants in China, a Brazilian company owns Chinese nickel mines, and a Chilean wine makers has invested in wine production in Xinjiang. While nearly all current South American administrations are keen on contacts with China, this has not prevented them from taking measures such as Chile’s ban on Chinese fishing vessels using port facilities as retaliation for what they say is Chinese overfishing of the sea outside Chile’s territorial waters.

Ellis also notes that despite all the attention of China’s “strategic partnership” with Venezuela and its warm welcome by leftist Andean presidents, Chinese investors, like all others, prize political stability, transparency, and developed infrastructure. This means that they have been far keener to provide loans to Chile, Argentina and Brazil than, say, Venezuela. Like in Africa, Chinese companies (and presumably politicians) are keen to leverage their comparative advantage in unstable places shunned by Western investors (or where Western investors are unwelcome), but they are equally intent to enter larger, stabler countries and play by the rules if they have to.

More energy investments by China

The weekend’s New York Times (David Barboza, “China gets a warmer welcome for its cash”) reports on further Chinese energy investments abroad following the Rio Tinto and OZ Minmetals deals. Venezuela got a $6 billion loan and agreed to increase oil shipments to China; this brings Chinese investment in the country to $12 billion. Brazil signed a $10 billion oil-backed loan agreement with China, and Russia’s state-owned Rosneft and Transneft oil companies got a $25 billion loan in exchange for 15 million tons of crude oil in the next 20 years.

So the question whether the recession will speed up or slow down Chinese involvement abroad seems to have been answered in favour of the former. It is possible, though, that as Chinese companies now find easier access and better deals in larger, richer countries, some of the traditional client states like Laos and Cambodia will receive less attention.

Inquiry about Chinese in Suriname

Since I have moved to Holland, the news I get from my anthropologist colleagues about Chinese migration and development projects tend to be from Africa or the former Dutch colony, Suriname. Here, recent Chinese immigrants are running more and more corner stores and restaurants, while larger Chinese companies have been building roads (very bad ones, according to my Surinamist colleague Marjo van de Theije) and setting up oil palm plantations.

What is interesting is how similar the discourse about these issues in Suriname — a poor country even by South American standards — seems to be to the one in Holland itself, and even more, to Southern and Eastern Europe, at least according to the main newspaper, De Ware Tijd: Chinese are illegal immigrants, victims/perpetrators of human trafficking, carriers of exotic illnesses, smugglers and money launderers.

Recently, the minister of justice has been accused of selling residence permits to Chinese (an accusation that has been levelled by the opposition at the governments of many countries, from Belize to Tonga and the former Yugoslavia). In an article entitled “Middenblok wants parliamentary enquiry about Chinese invasion,” and dated 24 December 2008, De  Ware Tijd reports that the opposition has proposed to subject Chinese immigrants to a medical examination in order “to minimise the occurrence of new diseases … (such as bird flu)” and to require them to learn Dutch. It has also asked the government to disclose any special agreement with China about granting Chinese immigrants privileged conditions and to reveal the sources of financing of Chinese supermarkets and restaurants, as it “did not have the impression that this came from local banks.”

In another article, entitled “Don’t flood Marowijne with Chinese,” De Ware Tijd reports about concerns over a Chinese oil palm plantation, an investment of China Zhong Hen Tai in Marowijne Province. A local politician, Ronny Brunswick, insisted that only “management needs to come here,” while all workers should be hired and trained locally.

Judging by comments on one website, Wereldomroep, though, Surinamese (at least those that are active online) seem much less concerned about (Chinese) immigration than their peers in Europe. One comment explicitly states that Suriname benefits from Chinese migrants, while the others either defend the minister or berate the government for corruption, but none even mentions the Chinese.