The exponential relationship between China and Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) has grown in the political, social, diplomatic, and even military dimensions. But the economic one is probably the most visible internationally, with trade gaining a central symbolism in what many consider a paradigmatic transformation in the global economic order. Multilateral channels that have also been pushing ahead that relationship include the “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI), the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), and the New Development Bank (NDB) created by the BRICS countries.

China is Latin America’s second-largest trading partner after the US. Still, for most Latin American countries, including Brazil, the largest economy in the region, it has been already the number one trading partner for years. According to IMF data, the total Chinese trade with Latin America in 2021 amounted to more than $420 billion. It represented about 41 percent year-on-year, with record imports and exports standing at $222.58 billion and 229.01 billion respectively. China remained the second-largest trading partner of the region, following the US given its trade with Mexico. That figure compares to U$ 895 billion with the US or to U$ 42.6 billion with Japan (Wits, 2020).

Petroleum, soybeans, iron, and copper are the four main commodities Latin American countries export to China. Their prices were affected by the pandemic and are yet to reach the 2014 peak. Examples of the trade with Beijing include great amounts of energy commodities like Colombian, Venezuelan and Ecuadorian oil, or other mineral and agricultural commodities as Brazilian iron ore and soybeans. The so-called Lithium Triangle, given its importance for Electric Vehicles (EV)  is another frontier for contrasting Japanese and Chinese interests in the region.

Japan and partners like the US have certainly woken up to that new reality. The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, formerly known as the TPP, for example, includes Chile and Peru, and was ratified also as a result of Tokyo’s Indo-Pacific vision.

Scholar and journalist Floriano Filho completed postdocs on China-LAC-Japan relations and energy security (National Sun Yat-sen University with a Taiwan Fellowship in 2019 and at the University of Tokyo with a Japan Foundation fellowship in 2022). Previously he was provisional director and coordinator for higher education at the School of Government of the Federal Senate of Brazil, He holds a Ph.D. in Development and International Cooperation (Japan and China strategic relations, the University of Brasilia, with fellowships at Johns Hopkins’ SAIS, and at the University of Tokyo’s ISS); an M.Sc. in Broadcast Journalism (Columbia University, ‘91); an M.A. with distinction in Communication Policies (University of Westminster, London, ‘01, Chevening scholarship); an MBA on Digital TV (UFF, ’16, Rio de Janeiro). He was a Monbusho research student (Tsukuba and Hitotsubashi universities, information society, ‘91 to ‘93), and a Reuters Foundation (University of Oxford, Global Trade of Digital Content, '06). He was a Washington DC-based TV correspondent, and a Fulbright-APSA senior Congressional fellow in the US House of Representatives ('07 to '09). He is on the Council of International Advisors of the Center for Democracy and Culture, University of Oklahoma, in Tulsa, and was a non-resident fellow at Taiwan's College of International Business and Foreign Languages, Chihlee University of Technology (Aug '20 to Jul '22).