Eric Farnsworth is Vice President of the Council of the Americas, and today's quote is from an article he wrote for Current History in February 2011.  In some important respects things were different then.  Hugo Chavez was still alive and running Venezuela, and the U.S. FTA with Colombia was still languishing in the political backwater of indecision, as were the ones with Panama and South Korea.  All that said, for the most part, it is an article that could have been written yesterday, with just a few figures updated.

The title of Mr. Farnsworth article was "The New Mercantilism: China's Emerging Role in the Americas."  Here is the full paragraph with the above quotation, plus a tad more:

Mr. Farnsworth is careful to note that the United States is still the dominant outside economic power for Latin America and the Caribbean and likely to remain so for some time.  But there are changes.  China is now Brazil's largest trading partner and Chile's, and the Asian colossus has free trade agreements with Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru.

If anything, the fact that most of Latin America now has significant economic options outside the Americas is truer today than it was in 2011. 

Mr. Farnsworth is not opposed to China's investment in the region.  "[It] is not illegitimate, illegal, or even necessarily threatening," he writes.  But he does have his frustrations.  One is that, although Chinese investments are in some important respects - namely the use of local labor - much less advantageous to the region than U.S. investments have been, the ire of Latin American elites seems still to be directed toward the United States, with very little criticism aimed at Beijing. 

But at least in one case, specifically the development of Bolivia's lithium deposits, Mr. Farnsworth may have had readers in very influential quarters.  In his 2011 article, Mr. Farnsworth wrote:

Remember that was two, almost three, years ago.  Last month the Shanghai news portal ENGLISH.EASTDAY.COM published a Xinhua net story from La Paz with this lead: "A group of Chinese technicians are expected in Bolivia to help install the country's first lithium battery plant."

That may not be precisely what Eric Farnsworth had in mind - there is some $2.9 million of U.S. investment in this plant, and the construction will be carried out by a Chinese company, but the facility will, ultimately, be operated by Bolivian workers.

Is there a political component to China's growing trade and investment relationships in Latin America and elsewhere?  That's one obvious question.  The intuitive answer is, of course, there has to be.  And, indeed, according to at least two academics there is.   Gustavo Flores-Marcia and Sarah Kreps, both assistant professors at Cornell, recently published a paper in the Journal of Politics on the warp and weft of China's economic and foreign policies.  As they explained in a Washington Post blog:
 
The fact that this conclusion of the Flores-Marcia and Kreps paper is not surprising does not make it any less interesting, and we are almost certain to revisit it in later entries.

Eric Farnsworth will be one of four speakers at the next GBD colloquium, The Dragon Goes Shopping, 2013.  Click the link for registration details and other information on this session, which will run from 9 to 10:30 a.m. at the National Press Club on Thursday, October 24.