China's growing influence in Latin America

Abstract

The geopolitical implications of China's rising influence, especially in regard to growing China-US tensions is often limited to the larger system level, disregarding the role that regions can play. Additionally, the focus of scholarship and policy on the China threat rhetoric as well as implicit biases of Western IR analytical frameworks have resulted in a deficient understanding of China's motivations and foreign policy. Moreover, there are not many studies accounting for the latter in the context of the Latin American and Caribbean region, which points at a shortcoming in the literature. As such, this thesis seeks to reframe the perspectives used to understand Chinese foreign policy and offer insight into its workings, positing that ideational components (namely narratives evoking commonalities) are intrinsic to it and economic ones are secondary, contrary to common knowledge. At the same time, this thesis sustains that there is value in acknowledging the regional sub-system level in any geopolitical assessment, as it pertains to the system level interplay. To this purpose, the thesis dissects China's influence aims by grounding them on Chinese and Latin American perspectives, and relates them to China's foreign policy during the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on mask and vaccine diplomacy. It then...