CHINA’S BRI: CHINA PLEDGES $9.2 BILLION TO GLOBAL SOUTH

Written by Michael Thervil

Photo by REUTERS/Tingshu Wang

Backing our previous article entitled: “Huawei defies US warning by exporting advanced AI chips”, last week Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged $9.2 billion to countries that fall into the category of the Global South but specifically geared towards Latin America and Caribbean countries. This deals a major blow to America’s Monroe Doctrine. One of the newest countries to sign on China's BRI (Belt and Road Initiative) was Columbia despite American opposition. If you're unfamiliar with what China's BRI is, you can think of it as China's “silk road 2.0 in which the goal is to logistically create a multilateral trade route in which all participants can benefit from”. This year’s CELAC forum “marks the 45th anniversary of diplomatic relations between China and Columbia” according to President Xi Jinping.

According to their website, Celac, the community of Latin American and Caribbean countries is “an intergovernmental mechanism for dialogue and political agreement, which permanently includes 33 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. CELAC is dedicated to social development, education, nuclear disarmament, family farming, culture, energy, finance, and environment amongst iBs conglomerate countries. CELAC also has close ties with Russia, India, Republic of Korea, cooperation council for the Arab states of the gulf, and turkeye.

It seems that why America was busy working through Blackrock with a Nigerian investor to acquire the Panama Canal back, China was gearing up to doing exactly what we predicted here at VEDA Communications – garner trade initiatives and trade deals with Latin America and Caribbean countries. This prediction was highlighted in our article entitled: “[name]”. This is a win-win situation for China as well as Latin American and Caribbean countries because signing on with China BRI will allow these countries to further grow and develop as well as increase their prospective GDP’s through trade and commerce. China wins because it will allow them to gain more influence on the world stage as well as export their advanced AI chips and software (Huawei) which has been under attack by the Americans.

Other applications such as renewable energy, oil and gas, infrastructure (shipping ports, railways, airports), manufacturing, and hospitality and tourism sectors will ultimately greatly benefit from Colombia and other Latin American and Caribbean countries as well. For many people around the world this is seen as one of China's finest hours as it takes a stand for both free trade and the free market in general. During this year's CELAC forum, China also pledged to assist in fighting terrorism and transnational organized crime. There are some 650 million consumers that China can potentially engage when it comes to the countries that make up CELAC.

Even though Columbia depends on American for roughly 30% of its exports, it's been reported that some businesses are very dependent on what China has to bring to the table in terms of trade. Is there any truth to some of Columbia's businesses being skeptical about China? Maybe, considering that there were some reports of Chinese BRI ventures leaving some countries in debt due to what some call “shady contracts”. According to some people that we talked to, that’s to be expected as there are cultural differences and the inevitability of at least some things going bad when it comes to cutting deals in business. Bad business or not, China's track record is still considered a good one when compared to other first world nations.