Recommendable! China is reaching out far and wide towards becoming a global superpower!
How will this affect the Monroe Doctrine? The U.S. certainly should be concerned!
"... China’s relationship with Central America, however, has historically been insignificant. As recently as 20 years ago, China’s volume of trade with all of Latin America amounted to just US$12 billion. Central America’s share was paltry.
Yet much has changed, especially since 2007, when Costa Rica became the first Central American nation in the millennium to break from Taiwan and recognise the People’s Republic of China. The move saw Costa Rica benefit from higher trade flows with China, increased Chinese investment and a new national sports stadium, among other infrastructure and development projects.
Panama offers a similar story. In 2001–02, its exports to the PRC totalled US$2 million; its imports from China amounted to just US$41 million. After recognising the PRC in June 2017, however, the Panamanian government opened negotiations on a free-trade agreement and became the first in the region to sign up to the Belt and Road Initiative. Two-way trade accordingly multiplied by a factor of 22. Panama’s exports to China rose to US$33 million by 2019, its imports from China mushroomed to 27 times that figure. ... Twenty-one major infrastructure projects have either happened or been touted, ranging from container ports and terminals linked to the Panama Canal to a fourth bridge over the waterway, rail lines, electricity transmission lines and telecommunications. Chinese commercial interests were soon sniffing around Panama’s largest commercial operation, a copper mine that ranks among the world’s largest (owned by a Canadian company with foundational links to Australia).
More recently, El Salvador and Nicaragua have abandoned Taipei. In the former’s case, this happened in August 2018 under El Salvador’s left-wing government, led by Salvador Sanchez Ceren, a former guerrilla leader who had waged a civil war against a US-backed junta from 1979 to 1992. ..."
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