Economic Corridors in Asia: Paradigm of Integration? A Reflection for Latin America

Book excerpt: Global geopolitics has shifted dramatically over the last thirty years. After the vanishing expectations of a unipolar international system led by the United States, China has gained an increasingly dominant role in areas as innovative as quantum computing, robotics and artificial intelligence. In the non-digital dimension, the eastern superpower has made gigantic investments in its Belt and Road Initiative, which include the development of a massive network of highways, industrial centers, harbors, pipelines and bridges, among many other works of infrastructure. These investments allow for the connection of more than 60 countries worldwide, guaranteeing China s energetic security, easier conditions for trading goods and services and, perhaps more importantly, a significant influence in the political and economic events of the world. States with political regimes as diverse as those of Russia and India are part of this growing network; in various cases, in exchange for the benefits associated wi th being part of it, major concessions were made. By way of illustration, Sri Lanka and Pakistan, among others, given their lack of capacity to pay for sorne of the works, have agreed to forfeit control of specific areas of their territories.