The New International Role of China and its Relations with Argentina in Times of Crisis”

EDUARDO DANIEL OVIEDO

Santiago de Chile

Congreso; IPSA, 21st World Congress of Political Science; 2009

IPSA

The economic crisis presents a moment of power redistribution that affects the correlation of forces among the nations. If China continue growing to high rates in the next two or three years, probably the asiatic country will shorten the gap with the United States before the academic world expectations. This new role of China in the international system shows us that the relation with the developing countries begins to turn, from the old scheme of South-South cooperation to the North-South relation, with important consequences in countries such as Argentina. This role of great power has been demonstrated in November of 2008 when the Chinese government published the China’s Policy Paper on Latin America and the Caribbean which showed the deploy of its potential to become the People’s Republic of China in a global power, taking advantage of the economic contraction of the United States and the greater margins of autonomy of the Latin American countries. While the European countries suffer the same problems of the hegemon, the concentration in its own internal situation presents a favorable condition that open perspectives for new Chinese incursions in the region. The financial instability and the dawn of economic recession, with certain possibilities to turn into depression, present new challenges and opportunities to the Argentine-Chinese relations, derived from the neon-protectionist restoration in the context of globalization and the changes in the world economic order that appear. The bilateral agenda continues maintaining recurrent themes, although the new economic and political stage presents modifications that should be kept in mind at the moment ofdetermining the State-nation politics and, consequently, the decisions of the social and economic actors.