China hopes to expand its growing economic and political clout at the Non-Aligned Movement summit, influence that analysts say will come at the cost of the US, which passed up a similar invitation to attend as an observer.
Led by China's Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Yang Jiechi (楊潔篪), the Chinese delegation plans to hold bilateral meetings with a number of Latin American countries and strengthen China's ties to the region where its trade soared. China's imports from Latin America quintupled to US$20.3 billion and exports to the region tripled to US$15.4 billion from 2000 to 2004, according to the IMF.
The administration of US President George W. Bush has declined to attend the summit, and a press officer at the US Interests Section in Havana said they wouldn't comment on the Non-Aligned Movement.
That's a mistake, according to Latin America analysts who have tracked declining US influence in a region where it can no longer count on the unconditional support of political leaders, even though US trade remains the most powerful engine for their economies.
"Bush likes to use the saying `You're either with us or against us' and they are writing off the summit because they are non-aligned, which to them means they are not with the US," said Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington.
The US is wary of the region's more leftist governments, some of which have openly opposed Washington's economic prescriptions of economic growth through austerity measures, "free trade" deals and privatization. The region's economies have largely stabilized -- hyperinflation and crippling debts are mostly history. But poverty and unemployment remain huge problems, and many Latin Americans feel the Washington model failed to improve their lives.
Some analysts say the US is out of touch, still trying to impose trade agreements that will make life even more difficult for the poor while raising the rhetoric about the dangers of populism in Venezuela, Bolivia and other countries.
Earlier this year, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld compared Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to Adolf Hitler, and Bush worried publicly about the leadership of Bolivian President Evo Morales.
Chavez's response was telling: At an event with Fidel Castro in Havana, he noted the waning US influence in the region and echoed Chinese revolutionary Mao Ze-dong's (毛澤東) idea that capitalist countries were "paper tigers" to be challenged.
China paid little attention to Latin America until recently, and its commerce with the region still represents less than one percent of its foreign trade, according to a Harvard University study commissioned by Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington research center. But now China is booming and looking to Latin America for the raw materials it needs to support its growth, and for new markets to sell to.
China, whose domestic consumption is expected to grow by US$1.3 trillion in the next decade, is increasingly seen by the world's developing nations as both a source of investment and a mammoth emerging market.
China mainly exports machinery, televisions, computers and automobiles to Latin America. In exchange, it buys about 30 percent of its agricultural imports, mostly soy beans, from Argentina and Brazil, China's largest trading partner in the region, and is one of the top buyers of Chilean copper.
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