00:00Jorge Heine is a former Chilean government minister and ambassador to China.
00:05He's co-author of the book, The Non-Aligned World.
00:08Latin America is obviously caught in the middle of U.S.-China tensions.
00:15And, you know, we are between a rock and a hard place, which in that sense is not a good place to be in.
00:21Latin America would not like to have to choose between the United States and China.
00:27It wants to do business with both, which is precisely the topic of my new book, The Non-Aligned World,
00:34which puts forward the notion of active non-alignment as the best way forward,
00:38not only for Latin America, but also for the rest of the global south.
00:42That said, I was at the first China-SELAC ministerial meeting held 10 years ago in Beijing in 2015.
00:52So I can say with some perspective that in these 10 years, China and Latin America have made tremendous strides.
01:01Trade between China and Latin America has doubled to $519 billion, which is, you know, a lot.
01:08For South America, as a whole, not Latin America, for South America, China today is the number one trading partner.
01:15One, five additional countries in the region have established diplomatic relations with China.
01:21Twenty-three have joined the Belt and Road Initiative, and eight have joined the Asian Investment and Infrastructure Bank.
01:29So a lot of progress has been made.
01:31Well, let's talk about the Belt and Road Initiative.
01:33Colombia recently joining.
01:35What does that say about the importance of China regionally?
01:38Colombia has traditionally been considered the so-called best friend of the United States in Latin America.
01:45So the fact that at this rather fraught international moment, Colombia decides to sign on to the Belt and Road Initiative, sends a powerful signal.
01:55President Petro of Colombia is in Beijing right now.
01:59His commitment is basically to the energy transition, to move Colombia towards a green economy.
02:05And in that regard, Chinese companies, of course, play a very significant role in e-mobility and green hydrogen and wind and solar energy.
02:18So for Colombia today, China is a very important partner, and his signing on to the BRI is an expression of that.
02:26And President Xi has spoken of joint efforts to safeguard the interests of the global south.
02:31What do you think that means in practice both for Chile and its neighbors?
02:34There are very significant challenges that not just Chile and Latin America, but Africa and Asia as well are facing these days, and they are not being adequately addressed.
02:48The most significant of those, of course, is climate change, and particularly the financing of climate change is an important aspect of it that is still unresolved.
02:59A commitment by developed countries to finance that have not really come through.
03:05Of course, there are a number of other problems.
03:08Another is financial indebtedness.
03:11In a developing nation, there are something like 58 to 60 countries in the developing world that have serious trouble in meeting their international financial obligations.
03:21There are problems of drought, problems of mass migration, problems of international crime.
03:29So there are some very serious issues out there, and the global south is keen to address them, and the moment is a particularly fraught one with all of these tensions that we are seeing.
03:42What does khác do you think of?
03:51Meanwhile, what makes a rare situation like that?
03:59The government is still around communities in the world.
04:02The people that really aren't in loving life,vet發 говоря, is not having rights of all of these tensions.
