At the end of last month, China published a detailed 16-page document, ‘China’s Policy Paper on Latin America and the Caribbean’, which sets out a new approach to relations between the Americas and the world’s second largest economy.
The document warrants close reading by governments and the private sector as it describes in considerable detail future Chinese policy towards the Americas on a wide range of topics, including the way China sees relations developing; its desire for high level government and political dialogue; the development of reciprocity in trade, including through free trade agreements; the creation of Chinese financial institutions across the Americas; cooperation on everything from agriculture through to social development; and the establishment of what it describes as closer people to people ties.
Although this brief description scarcely does justice to the document’s breadth or ambition, it is clear from reading it that it potentially offers, perhaps for the first time, an agenda around which the region can develop a practical bilateral dialogue with Beijing that can take relations far beyond where they presently are.