Bush likes to use the saying 'You're either with us or against us'
- From: periodistalibre@xxxxxxx
- Date: 14 Sep 2006 12:37:02 -0700
China seizes chance at Cuba summit --
HAVANA, Cuba (AP) -- China hopes to expand its growing economic and
political clout at the Nonaligned Movement summit, influence that
analysts say will come at the cost of the United States, which passed
up a similar invitation to attend as an observer.
Led by China's Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Yang Jiechi, 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 International Monetary
Fund.
The administration of U.S. President George W. Bush has declined to
attend the summit, and a press officer at the U.S. Interests Section
in Havana said they wouldn't comment on the Nonaligned Movement.
That's a mistake, according to Latin America analysts who have
tracked declining U.S. influence in a region where it can no longer
count on the unconditional support of political leaders, even though
U.S. 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 U.S.," said Mark Weisbrot,
co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in
Washington, D.C.
The United States 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 U.S. 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, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. 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 U.S. influence in the region and echoed
Chinese revolutionary Mao Zedong's 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 colossal 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.
And unlike the United States, which often uses trade deals as
political leverage, China has avoided political meddling, said
Weisbrot, who predicts that U.S. commerce may have already peaked as
a share of Latin America's economies, while their trade with China
will grow substantially.
China, whose domestic consumption is expected to grow by US$1.3
trillion ($1 trillion euros) 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.
While some Chinese products have made it difficult for some Latin
American industries to compete, Chinese investments have made it
easier for Argentina, Brazil and other countries to buy political
independence with early payoffs of their national debts.
"(The U.S. is) refusing to acknowledge the changes that are taking
place in Latin America," Weisbrot said. "That's why they are losing
influence so rapidly."
While the relationship is purely economic for most developing
countries, Cuba, Bolivia and Venezuela see China as a counterweight
to U.S. hegemony.
Relations between the Cuba and China were tense during the Cold War,
when the Caribbean island was strongly allied with the Soviet Union,
but warmed after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and Cuba lost its
preferential trade and aid deals with the Soviet bloc.
China is now Cuba's third-largest trading partner, with a trade
exchange of US$985 million in 2005. China invests primarily in Cuba's
nickel industry as well as tourism, transportation and
telecommunications.
"Without a doubt these relations have developed in the framework of
our shared political ideology," Cuba's Economics Minister Jose Luis
Rodriguez told reporters at the Nonaligned summit this week.
But Communist Cuba has a unique relationship with China -- which so
far seems unwilling to raise political quarrels with the United
States over Latin America, said Javier Corrales, a Latin America
expert at Ahmerst College in Massachusetts.
"At the moment," he said, "what China is doing is not costly in its
relations with the U.S."
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