Paradiplomacy and cooperation in the Pandemic era: A review from China in Latin America

FLORENCIA RUBIOLO; JORGE GONZALO FIORE VIANI

Over the Atlantic. Diplomacy and Paradiplomacy in EU and Latin America

Peter Lang

Año: 2023; p. 119 - 137

The global pandemic has faced humanity with one of the most devastating, disruptive, and unequal crises of recent times. The collapse of world trade that had been dragging years of economic deceleration after the 2008 crisis; the general closure of borders; the interruption of commercial and productive activities; the fall in employment rates and the increase in the level of world poverty are some of the immediate consequences of this ongoing catastrophe. The international action of local and provincial governments acquired a deeper role. Among other measures, dialogue was promoted in subnational exchange spaces -such as UN Habitat and Mercociudades- that allowed the exchange of experiences between local actors. The closeness to the varied demands of the territories, and the capacity to adapt national measures to local contexts highlighted the role of the local level in the implementation of decisions in times of crisis.Decentralized international cooperation was the area that received the greatest boost from municipal and regional governments in Latin America. In the broad range of international actors, the main partners in terms of decentralized cooperation were their Chinese counterparts. In this sense, pre-established mechanisms were activated based on local and regional level agreements along with sister cities agreements, which mainly promoted the obtention of international health aid directed straight to the territories. Based on these insights and added to the fact that the pandemic was an accelerator of China's subnational-level ties with different regions of the Global South, in this chapter we propose to analyze the main actions and practices implemented by China in Latin America from a paradiplomacy perspective, in the context of the pandemic.