Historically, Western policies have encouraged China’s involvement in what is now called the Global South. In the 19th century, Western countries treated China like a colony; Treaty PortChinese immigrants who sought fortunes overseas were rejected by xenophobia in Western countries and instead migrated to countries in the Global South.
In the early 20th century, Chinese Exclusion Act About 60,000 Chinese immigrants arrived in Mexico after the implementation of the desegregation laws in the U.S. However, despite this racial discrimination at home and abroad, some Chinese elites still wanted to emulate the West to show that China was from the North.
In the 1960s, China, isolated from the West and the Soviet Union, underwent a fundamental change in its thinking. For the first time, China began to assert itself as a member of the Global South. Throughout the reform era of the 1980s, China again began to look to the United States as its economic model. However, in the past decade, trade frictionChina has once again turned south. Like many developing countries, China sees itself as a victim of foreign exploitation in the past.
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China’s “Gold Rush” in Mexico: Why are Chinese companies investing south of the Rio Grande?
China’s “Gold Rush” in Mexico: Why are Chinese companies investing south of the Rio Grande?
the Belt and Road InitiativeChinese infrastructure projects have outpaced those of their Western counterparts in many countries in the Global South. But these investments, beyond development plans, are merely a means to an end. Beijing is seeking to open up new markets for its products, recapitalize its trade surplus and fill the void left by Western investors. With lower risk tolerance and narrower planning, Western infrastructure companies are often left behind by Vietnam-China high-speed rail connection.
But the Belt and Road is not just about government policy. It is also about migrants and entrepreneurs seeking economic opportunity. While Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries remain the Chinese’s favorite destination, millions of Chinese are also traveling to Africa, the Middle East and South America. In Mexico, for example, they are moving there just as they did a century ago. rapidly The second largest immigrant group.
Indeed, by the 16th century, China was already playing a major role in trans-Pacific trade, exchanging silk and porcelain for one-third of the silver mined annually in South America. Historians consider the Spanish colony of Mexico to be one of the first examples of globalization: for the first time, products from three continents were exchanged in a nascent world order, with London and New York still on the periphery at the time.
China and the West are currently competing for influence in the Global South, with the West clearly gaining an advantage through soft power, but the balance is threatening to be upset by the endless wars that the West seems to encourage, and by Western politicians who are increasingly xenophobic.
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An unwinnable conflict? Five years into the US-China trade war
An unwinnable conflict? Five years into the US-China trade war
On the economic front, it is worth highlighting that Chinese-made products, from mobile phones to electric cars, appear well suited to the mass markets of the Global South, giving China a clear advantage.
In cases where developing countries have entered into trade partnerships with Western nations, economic outcomes have been mixed. Since the EU admitted Poland and other Eastern European countries to the EU in 2004, Warsaw’s economy has grown by an average of 4.2% annually. But the North American Free Trade Agreement with the United States and Canada in 1994 and the EU-EU Free Trade Agreement with the United States and Canada in 2009 have both produced poor economic results. Trade agreements revised in 2020 Since replacing it, Mexico’s economy has grown by an average of just 2% per year.
While the trade agreement created industrial jobs (taking some away from the United States), it also displaced millions of poor Mexican farmers who could not compete with subsidized U.S. agricultural imports, causing a rapid increase in Mexico’s population in the U.S. Imports of processed foods from the U.S. and some of the world’s highest rates of soda consumption have more than doubled Mexico’s obesity rate, putting further pressure on an underserved health care system.
Fueled by poverty and US firearms, organized crime in Mexico expanded, causing the murder rate to rise by 60%, overtaking Brazil as one of the most violent countries in South America and exacerbating the US drug crisis. In 2022, the Mexican government felt compelled to sue US gun manufacturers. This is why Mexico Re-elected by an overwhelming margin Anti-neoliberal, populist government.
The experience of the West and China in the Global South offers important lessons. Countries will not easily forget the close interplay between environmental, trade, migration and development policies. It highlights the importance of a fair trade and investment system, and of balancing the economic benefits of globalization with just social policies for those displaced by it.
Simply imposing trade barriers, tariffs, walls and sanctions is not the best long-term solution for the planet. Promoting social justice at home is the best solution.
Hugo Wong, a longtime investor in China and Mexico, is the author of “America’s Lost Chinese,” a historical memoir that chronicles the rise and fall of Chinese-Mexican families over the past few centuries.
