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A New Dependency? On the Economic Geography of China-Latin America Relations

Bervejillo, Guillermo
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0629-4487
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1610087013845215

Abstract Details

2021, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Geography.
This is a study of the political and economic geography of the relations between contemporary China and South America. The object of my research is the political-economic asymmetry across these transpacific relations. Are they an axis on which to improve social welfare, or an axis of subjugation exacerbating existing political-economic disparities? To answer these questions, I interview Latin American bureaucrats, politicians, entrepreneurs, intellectuals, and journalists to gain insight into the logics that guide and shape their exchanges with their Chinese counterparts. As a case study, I focus on the geopolitics of food and China’s relations with the region of the Rio de la Plata (Uruguay and Northeastern Argentina). Observing the worrying signs of Latin America’s renewed dependence on primary commodity production, I evaluate the merits of characterizing China-Latin America relations as a new form of imperialism or dependency. First, I define these terms and review how they have been mobilized in recent literature to shine light on the more unpleasant dimensions of transpacific relations. Then I set out to find the tell-tale signs of imperialism: the operation of political-economic coercion and state violence in international economic relations. I argue that there is little to be gained from using these terms to explain China-Latin America relations. Instead, I observe novel forms of political-economic exchange that imply a rearticulation of hierarchical international relations. The practices and institutions of China’s foreign affairs complex establish new geopolitical and economic imaginaries of a China-centered geopolitical economy and serve as the basis of China’s emergent geoeconomic logic. Crucially, these practices and institutions provide formal mechanisms to substantiate otherwise intangible international exchanges, they serve as a material manifestations of China’s growing trust in and recognition of partner countries. This mechanism serves as a basis for a novel project of international belonging, a new form of global citizenship, which can organize material relations of production and exchange in a China-centered future. To theorize China’s geoeconomic and provide conceptual tools with which to understand the character of China-Latin America relations, I draw from the work of Karatani Kojin and Giovanni Arrighi. With these two thinkers of history and political economy, I conceptualize China’s geoeconomic logic as an articulation of the expansionary tendencies of the capital-nation-state construct. I argue that the prominent role played by the reciprocal exchanges of recognition and belonging, which Karatani describes as giving shape to the modern capitalist nation, indicate the unique character of China’s geoeconomic logic and suggest that this logic could be the basis of China’s continued expanded accumulation.
Joel Wainwright, Dr. (Advisor)
Trevor Barnes, Dr. (Committee Member)
Abril Trigo, Dr. (Committee Member)
Max Woodworth, Dr. (Committee Member)
202 p.
Economic Theory; Geography; International Relations; Social Research
Economic Geography; China; Latin America; Geopolitics of Food; Confucius Institutes; Modes of Exchange; Political Economy; Critical Human Geography; Trade

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Citations

  • Bervejillo, G. (2021). A New Dependency? On the Economic Geography of China-Latin America Relations [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1610087013845215

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Bervejillo, Guillermo. A New Dependency? On the Economic Geography of China-Latin America Relations . 2021. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1610087013845215.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Bervejillo, Guillermo. "A New Dependency? On the Economic Geography of China-Latin America Relations ." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2021. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1610087013845215

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1610087013845215
246
© 2021, some rights reserved.Creative Commons License A New Dependency? On the Economic Geography of China-Latin America Relations by Guillermo Bervejillo is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at etd.ohiolink.edu.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.