China confirms its influence in Argentina

With the incorporation of Buenos Aires to the “New Silk Roads” on February 6, Beijing continues to install its radiation in South America. The Empire of the Middle is the second commercial partner of Argentina.

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It’s a month of celebration in the Sino-Argentine bilateral relationship. On February 19, the two countries celebrated half a century of diplomatic relations, the opportunity to make 2022 “the year of Friendship and Argentina-China Cooperation”. Two weeks earlier, on Sunday, February 6, Buenos Aires and Beijing had signed a memorandum of accession to the “New Silk Roads”, a large investment project in Infrastructure and Technology from China, encompassing nearly 150 countries, tool of its influence around the world. “We value the deep and supported link of Sino-Argentine (…) I will keep the warm welcome of the Chinese people in memory”, greets on Twitter The Argentine President Alberto Fernandez (left center).

He has just announced the amounts of investments, in two parts. The first, “already approved”, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, worth $ 14 billion (about 12.7 billion euros), includes ten infrastructure projects – including key projects of the plant Hydroelectric of the Santa Cruz River and the Nuclear IV power plant in Zarate. The second, $ 9.7 billion, still subject to validation, has a total of 16 projects, mixing aqueducts, hydroelectric complex, highway, or wind parks, according to official Argentine sources.

Regain. ‘investments

What horizon? No date is indicated. “One of the central yards is the gas pipeline system (…) in order to achieve the self-supply of gas throughout the country”, detail these same sources, under cover of anonymity, but taking care to detail the manna for the Country: 3,000 direct and indirect workstations for start-up, 1,200 posts thanks to the new production to be transported. Nearly $ 2 billion in investment. The two countries also signed a series “institutional cooperation documents” in different areas of education to agriculture, the “public communication media” or nuclear energy.

This renewed investment – a bargain while Argentina notes the head after three years of recession and is struggling with an economy perclusive by inflation and poverty – was expected. The two countries deepen there a rapprochement undertaken as early as the 1990s. Beijing then focuses on much more acuteness in the countries of South America. “The latter provide China mainly soy, minerals and oil. Since the years 2010, China has been investing in an increasing way to meet its raw material needs,” Remember Marie Forget and Silvina Carrizo in an analysis for Presses of Sciences Po dating from 2015. It is in 2004 that the Government of Nestor Kirchner (Left) sign different multilateral agreements, which can be read on the other hand of a diversification of international relations, contrary to the connection with the United States, the main contributor to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), partly responsible for the 2001 crisis.

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/Media reports.