First Forum of China and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC): Exploring opportunities for cooperation on trade and investment

This document is a contribution by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) to the First Forum of China and Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC),(Beijing, 8 and 9 January 2015). The document consists of three parts. The first part summarizes the main components of the international economic scenario for Latin America and the Caribbean. The second part provides a brief overview of trade and investment relations between the region and China. And the third part sets out conclusions and recommendations for improving the quality of economic ties between the two trading partners..

Latin America and the Caribbean and China: towards a new era in economic cooperation

Foreword by Alicia Bárcena

Análise do perfil ambiental do comércio entre a China e Países Latino-americanos

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

A diplomacia de ascensão pacífica como estratégia de política externa da China: as relações com o Vietnã e as disputas sobre as ilhas

Pós-graduação em Relações Internacionais (UNESP - UNICAMP - PUC-SP) - FFC

Narrating Boundaries: Framing and Contesting Suffering, Community, and Belonging in Enclaves along the India-Bangladesh Border

This paper explores the politics of community making at the India-Bangladesh border by examining the public and private narratives of history and belonging in a Bangladeshi enclave-a sovereign piece of Bangladesh completely territorially surrounded by India. Drawing on framings of political society, this paper argues that understanding populations at the margins of South Asia and beyond requires attention to two processes: first, to the ways that para-legal activities are part and parcel of daily life; and second, to the strategies through which these groups construct themselves as moral communities deserving of inclusion within the state. Border communities often articulate narratives of dispossession, exceptionality, and marginalization to researchers and other visitors-narratives that are often unproblematically reproduced in academic treatments of the border. However, such articulations mask both the complicated histories and quotidian realities of border life. This paper views these articulations as political projects in and of themselves. By reading the more hidden histories of life in this border enclave, this article reconstructs the notion of borders as experienced by enclave residents themselves. It shows the ways that the politics of the India-Bangladesh border are constitutive of (and constituted by) a range of fractures and internal boundaries within the enclave. These boundaries are as central to forging community-to articulating who belongs and why-as are more public narratives that frame enclave residents as victims of confused territorial configurations. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Effectively Engaging with a Dragon: Examining the Nature and Impact of the Most Recent Decade of Sino-African Multilateral Relations

The goal of my research is to examine in detail the impact of the increase in Sino-African trade on African political and economic development. The primary focus will be on two central aspects of Sino-African trade: the effects of China’s natural resource binge coupled with the flood of textiles and other manufactured goods from China to Africa. This thesis will determine the precise nature and extent ofSino-African trade in these sectors and will attempt to determine whether or not Chinese trade is having a net positive impact on long-term African economic development. I will investigate this issue from numerous perspectives using English, Chinese, and African sources.

Moving from sustainable management to sustainable governance of natural resources: The role of social learning processes in rural India, Bolivia and Mali

The present paper discusses a conceptual, methodological and practical framework within which the limitations of the conventional notion of natural resource management (NRM) can be overcome. NRM is understood as the application of scientific ecological knowledge to resource management. By including a consideration of the normative imperatives that arise from scientific ecological knowledge and submitting them to public scrutiny, ‘sustainable management of natural resources’ can be recontextualised as ‘sustainable governance of natural resources’. This in turn makes it possible to place the politically neutralising discourse of ‘management’ in a space for wider societal debate, in which the different actors involved can deliberate and negotiate the norms, rules and power relations related to natural resource use and sustainable development. The transformation of sustainable management into sustainable governance of natural resources can be conceptualised as a social learning process involving scientists, experts, politicians and local actors, and their corresponding scientific and non-scientific knowledges. The social learning process is the result of what Habermas has described as ‘communicative action’, in contrast to ‘strategic action’. Sustainable governance of natural resources thus requires a new space for communicative action aiming at shared, intersubjectively validated definitions of actual situations and the goals and means required for transforming current norms, rules and power relations in order to achieve sustainable development. Case studies from rural India, Bolivia and Mali explore the potentials and limitations for broadening communicative action through an intensification of social learning processes at the interface of local and external knowledge. Key factors that enable or hinder the transformation of sustainable management into sustainable governance of natural resources through social learning processes and communicative action are discussed.

Explaining Variations in Client Extra Costs between Software Projects Offshored to India

Gaining economic benefits from substantially lower labor costs has been reported as a major reason for offshoring labor-intensive information systems services to low-wage countries. However, if wage differences are so high, why is there such a high level of variation in the economic success between offshored IS projects? This study argues that offshore outsourcing involves a number of extra costs for the ^his paper was recommended for acceptance by Associate Guest Editor Erran Carmel. client organization that account for the economic failure of offshore projects. The objective is to disaggregate these extra costs into their constituent parts and to explain why they differ between offshored software projects. The focus is on software development and maintenance projects that are offshored to Indian vendors. A theoretical framework is developed a priori based on transaction cost economics (TCE) and the knowledge-based view of the firm, comple mented by factors that acknowledge the specific offshore context The framework is empirically explored using a multiple case study design including six offshored software projects in a large German financial service institution. The results of our analysis indicate that the client incurs post contractual extra costs for four types of activities: (1) re quirements specification and design, (2) knowledge transfer, (3) control, and (4) coordination. In projects that require a high level of client-specific knowledge about idiosyncratic business processes and software systems, these extra costs were found to be substantially higher than in projects where more general knowledge was needed. Notably, these costs most often arose independently from the threat of oppor tunistic behavior, challenging the predominant TCE logic of market failure. Rather, the client extra costs were parti cularly high in client-specific projects because the effort for managing the consequences of the knowledge asymmetries between client and vendor was particularly high in these projects. Prior experiences of the vendor with related client projects were found to reduce the level of extra costs but could not fully offset the increase in extra costs in highly client-specific projects. Moreover, cultural and geographic distance between client and vendor as well as personnel turnover were found to increase client extra costs. Slight evidence was found, however, that the cost-increasing impact of these factors was also leveraged in projects with a high level of required client-specific knowledge (moderator effect).

Structural, metamorphic and geochronological relations between the Zanskar Shear Zone and the Miyar Shear Zone (NW Indian Himalaya): Evidence for two distinct tectonic structures and implications for the evolution of the High Himalayan Crystalline of Zanskar

The geologic structures and metamorphic zonation of the northwestern Indian Himalaya contrast significantly with those in the central and eastern parts of the range, where the high-grade metamorphic rocks of the High Himalayan Crystalline (HHC) thrust southward over the weakly metamorphosed sediments of the Lesser Himalaya along the Main Central Thrust (MCT). Indeed, the hanging wall of the MCT in the NW Himalaya mainly consists of the greenschist facies metasediments of the Chamba zone, whereas HHC high-grade rocks are exposed more internally in the range as a large-scale dome called the Gianbul dome. This Gianbul dome is bounded by two oppositely directed shear zones, the NE-dipping Zanskar Shear Zone (ZSZ) on the northern flank and the SW-dipping Miyar Shear Zone (MSZ) on the southern limb. Current models for the emplacement of the HHC in NW India as a dome structure differ mainly in terms of the roles played by both the ZSZ and the MSZ during the tectonothermal evolution of the HHC. In both the channel flow model and wedge extrusion model, the ZSZ acts as a backstop normal fault along which the high-grade metamorphic rocks of the HHC of Zanskar are exhumed. In contrast, the recently proposed tectonic wedging model argues that the ZSZ and the MSZ correspond to one single detachment system that operates as a subhorizontal backthrust off of the MCT. Thus, the kinematic evolution of the two shear zones, the ZSZ and the MSZ, and their structural, metamorphic and chronological relations appear to be diagnostic features for discriminating the different models. In this paper, structural, metamorphic and geochronological data demonstrate that the MSZ and the ZSZ experienced two distinct kinematic evolutions. As such, the data presented in this paper rule out the hypothesis that the MSZ and the ZSZ constitute one single detachment system, as postulated by the tectonic wedging model. Structural, metamorphic and geochronological data are used to present an alternative tectonic model for the large-scale doming in the NW Indian Himalaya involving early NE-directed tectonics, weakness in the upper crust, reduced erosion at the orogenic front and rapid exhumation along both the ZSZ and the MSZ.

From Personal Network to Institution Building: The Lifanyuan and the Formalization of Manchu-Mongol Relations

The Qing emperors, who ruled over China from 1644-1911, managed to bring large parts of Inner Asia under their control and extended the territory of China to an unprecedented degree. This paper maintains that the political technique of patronage with its formalized language, its emphasis on gift exchange and expressions of courtesy is a useful concept for explaining the integration of Inner Asian confederations into the empire. By re-interpreting the obligations of gift exchange, the Qing transformed the network of personal relationships, which had to be reinforced and consolidated permanently into a system with clearly defined rules. In this process of formalization, the Lifanyuan, the Court for the Administration of the Outer Regions, played a key role. While in the early years of the dynasty, it was responsible for collecting and disseminating information concerning the various patronage relationships with Inner Asian leaders, over the course of the 17th and 18th centuries its efforts were directed at standardizing and streamlining the contacts between ethnic minorities and the state. Through the Lifanyuan, the rules and principles of patronage were maintained in a modified form even in the later part of the dynasty, when the Qing exercised control in the outer regions more directly. The paper provides an explanation for the longevity and cohesiveness of the multi-ethnic Qing empire. Based on recently published Manchu and Mongolian language archival material and the Maussian concept of gift exchange the study sheds new light on the changing self-conception of the Qing emperors.

Las relaciones sino-rusas y la Organización de Cooperación de Shanghái como un primer eje de análisis sobre la cuestión

Esta investigación tiene como eje fundamental el estudio de las relaciones actuales sino-rusas y, más particularmente, a la organización de cooperación de Shanghái (en adelante OCS) como un punto de convergencia de intereses Chinos y Rusos en la región de Asía central. Dicha dinámica supone, por un lado, la posibilidad de un proceso de colaboración y de desarrollo conjunto en la región. Pero por otro lado supone un conflicto de intereses ya que tanto China como Rusia buscan expandir su órbita de influencia en el espacio post-sovietico ya señalado. Por lo dicho este estudio intenta acercarse a la comprensión de la dinámica de la OCS en los últimos años. Para ello se aproxima a la temática, partir de dos miradas: La primera podría catalogarse como una mirada que enfatiza cuestiones de carácter acontecimental y cuyo interés reside en comprender los cambios acaecidos en la OCS en los últimos años, un análisis de los acuerdos hacia dentro y fuera del grupo, los marcos e instituciones que componen a la OCS, las distintas instancias de contacto entre los gobiernos ruso y chino, etc. La segunda mirada, a sabiendas de la expansión de las economías asiáticas en los últimos años, profundiza lo expresado anteriormente y lo enmarca en una concepción más amplia que parte del presupuesto teórico de que nos encontramos actualmente en una transición del centro de poder global (Wallerstein, 2006) desde Estados Unidos y Europa Occidental hacia las potencias emergentes asiáticas como la República popular de China, Rusia, India y el continente asiático en general. Dicha mirada funcionara como una guía y un presupuesto para pensar la cuestión desde una óptica de largo plazo

Las relaciones sino-rusas y la Organización de Cooperación de Shanghái como un primer eje de análisis sobre la cuestión

Esta investigación tiene como eje fundamental el estudio de las relaciones actuales sino-rusas y, más particularmente, a la organización de cooperación de Shanghái (en adelante OCS) como un punto de convergencia de intereses Chinos y Rusos en la región de Asía central. Dicha dinámica supone, por un lado, la posibilidad de un proceso de colaboración y de desarrollo conjunto en la región. Pero por otro lado supone un conflicto de intereses ya que tanto China como Rusia buscan expandir su órbita de influencia en el espacio post-sovietico ya señalado. Por lo dicho este estudio intenta acercarse a la comprensión de la dinámica de la OCS en los últimos años. Para ello se aproxima a la temática, partir de dos miradas: La primera podría catalogarse como una mirada que enfatiza cuestiones de carácter acontecimental y cuyo interés reside en comprender los cambios acaecidos en la OCS en los últimos años, un análisis de los acuerdos hacia dentro y fuera del grupo, los marcos e instituciones que componen a la OCS, las distintas instancias de contacto entre los gobiernos ruso y chino, etc. La segunda mirada, a sabiendas de la expansión de las economías asiáticas en los últimos años, profundiza lo expresado anteriormente y lo enmarca en una concepción más amplia que parte del presupuesto teórico de que nos encontramos actualmente en una transición del centro de poder global (Wallerstein, 2006) desde Estados Unidos y Europa Occidental hacia las potencias emergentes asiáticas como la República popular de China, Rusia, India y el continente asiático en general. Dicha mirada funcionara como una guía y un presupuesto para pensar la cuestión desde una óptica de largo plazo

Las relaciones sino-rusas y la Organización de Cooperación de Shanghái como un primer eje de análisis sobre la cuestión

Esta investigación tiene como eje fundamental el estudio de las relaciones actuales sino-rusas y, más particularmente, a la organización de cooperación de Shanghái (en adelante OCS) como un punto de convergencia de intereses Chinos y Rusos en la región de Asía central. Dicha dinámica supone, por un lado, la posibilidad de un proceso de colaboración y de desarrollo conjunto en la región. Pero por otro lado supone un conflicto de intereses ya que tanto China como Rusia buscan expandir su órbita de influencia en el espacio post-sovietico ya señalado. Por lo dicho este estudio intenta acercarse a la comprensión de la dinámica de la OCS en los últimos años. Para ello se aproxima a la temática, partir de dos miradas: La primera podría catalogarse como una mirada que enfatiza cuestiones de carácter acontecimental y cuyo interés reside en comprender los cambios acaecidos en la OCS en los últimos años, un análisis de los acuerdos hacia dentro y fuera del grupo, los marcos e instituciones que componen a la OCS, las distintas instancias de contacto entre los gobiernos ruso y chino, etc. La segunda mirada, a sabiendas de la expansión de las economías asiáticas en los últimos años, profundiza lo expresado anteriormente y lo enmarca en una concepción más amplia que parte del presupuesto teórico de que nos encontramos actualmente en una transición del centro de poder global (Wallerstein, 2006) desde Estados Unidos y Europa Occidental hacia las potencias emergentes asiáticas como la República popular de China, Rusia, India y el continente asiático en general. Dicha mirada funcionara como una guía y un presupuesto para pensar la cuestión desde una óptica de largo plazo