China Sphere of Influence DA - Berkeley 2013

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Chinas influence in North American trade is expanding
Shaiken et al 13
[Harley. Prof in the Center for Latin American Studies at UC-Berkeley. And Enrique Peters Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Miami. And Adrian Hearn Centro de Estudios China-Mexixo at Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. China and the New Triangular Relationships in the Americas: China and the Future of US-Mexico Relations, 2013. Pg 7-8]
This paper highlights the reality that China has indeed integrated
itself into North America in a process beginning in 2001 with Chinas adherence to the World Trade Organization. Before 2001, both Mexico and the U.S. were increasing and deepening trade relations and regional specializations within the parameters of NAFTA. Since 2001, however, this process has reversed as a result of Chinas massive trade volume with both the U.S. and Mexico. The analysis presented herein shows that Chinas rapidly developing trade relationship with both Mexico and the U.S. has had significant effects on each countrys respective trade dynamics. For instance, today China is the second largest trading partner for both Mexico and the United States, falling behind only the total intraNAFTA trade volume. As we have seen from our examination of the top twenty products imported by Mexico from the U.S. and China, the structure of trade in the region is shifting significantly : for Mexico, its export share in the U.S. market has fallen sharply, contrary to the trade growth of Asia, and particularly of China. As discussed previously, from 2000-2011 both the U.S. and Mexico endured substantial losses in their respective export markets in the NAFTA region, particularly in regards to the manufacturing sector and in products such as telecommunications equipment, electric power machinery, passenger motor vehicles, and clothing accessories and garments, among many others. NAFTA, since its origins, has passed through two distinct phases. During the first phase (1994-2000), the region was deeply
integrated as a result of trade, investment, and rules of origin in specific industrial sectors such as autoparts-automobiles (AA) and yarn-textilegarments (YTG). In this first phase, NAFTA evolved in accordance with some of the predictions and estimations that we discuss in the literature survey. The region as a whole grew in terms of GDP, trade, investment, employment, and wages, among other variables, while intra-industry trade increased substantially. While
some of the gaps between the U.S. and Mexico were slowly closing, however, this was only true for a small portion of Mexicos highly polarized socioeconomic and territorial structure. In other words, even in Mexican sectors highly integrated with NAFTA , the integration process did not allow for the promotion of backward and forward linkages in Mexico. In the second phase (2000-), NAFTA has shown a deterioration of this process of integration in terms of investment and intraindustrial trade, among other variables. During this time period, both Mexico and the United States have been on the losing end of competitions with third-party countries, a topic only discussed somewhat in debates on NAFTA (see the
survey in part two of this paper).
The link is increased economic engagement. Lack of US influence is key to Chinas expansion in Latin America
Shaiken et al 13
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The dominant strategies of each of the parties and how these strategies evolve over time: Mexicos
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regional and global position is being shaped by an increasing accent on diplomatic and trade diversification. The decline in US influence
and the expected reforms in the Mexican energy sector may
open more room for Mexico to adjust to a
growth strategy
less dependent on the United States . Chinas rising role as a regional and global power and the new economic scenario marked by higher wages and growing concentration in industrial commodities and products are likely to affect the pace of change according to which Chinas going out strategy
will develop in the near future. If
Mexico and China reorient their strategies, it is likely that t here will be an
adjustment in the triangles dynamic , which may result in a closer relationship between these two countries.
Chinese international influence is an existential impact it controls every scenario for extinction
Zhang 12
*Prof of Diplomacy and IR at the Geneva School of Diplomacy. The Rise of Chinas Political Softpower 9/4/12 http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/201209/04/content_26421330.htm ]
As China plays an increasingly significant role in the world, its soft power must be attractive both domestically as well as internationally. The world faces many difficulties, including widespread poverty , international conflict , the clash of civilizations and environmental protection . Thus far, the Western model has not been able to decisively address these issues; the China model therefore brings hope that we can make progress in conquering these dilemmas. Poverty and development The Western-dominated global economic order has worsened poverty in developing countries. Per-capita
consumption of resources in developed countries is 32 times as large as that in developing countries. Almost half of the population in the world still lives in poverty. Western countries nevertheless still are striving to consolidate their wealth using any and all necessary means. In
contrast, China forged a new path of development for its citizens in spite of this unfair international order which enabled it to virtually eliminate extreme poverty at home. This extensive experience would indeed be helpful in the fight against global poverty. War and peace In the past few years, the American model of "exporting democracy'" has produced a more turbulent world, as the increased risk of terrorism threatens global security . In contrast, China insists that "harmony is most precious". It is more practical, the Chinese system argues, to strengthen international cooperation while addressing both the symptoms and root causes of terrorism. The clash of civilizations Conflict between Western countries and the Islamic world is intensifying. "In a world, which is diversified and where multiple civilizations
coexist, the obligation of Western countries is to protect their own benefits yet promote benefits of other nations," wrote Harvard University professor Samuel P. Huntington in his seminal 1993 essay "The Clash of Civilizations?". China
strives for "being harmonious yet remaining different", which means to respect other nations, and learn from each other. This philosophy is, in fact, wiser than that of Huntington, and it's also the reason why few religious conflicts have broken out in China. China's stance in regards to reconciling cultural conflicts, therefore, is more preferable than its "self-centered" Western counterargument. Environmental protection Poorer countries and their people are the most obvious victims of global warming, yet they are the least responsible for the emission of greenhouse gases . Although Europeans and Americans have a strong awareness of environmental protection, it is still hard to change their extravagant lifestyles. Chinese environmental protection standards are not yet ideal, but some effective environmental ideas can be extracted from the China model. Perfecting the China model The China model is still being perfected, but its unique influence in dealing with the above four issues grows as China becomes stronger. China's experiences in eliminating poverty,
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prioritizing modernization while maintaining traditional values, and creating core values for its citizens demonstrate our insight and sense of human consciousness. Indeed, the success of the China model has not only brought about China's rise, but also a new trend that can't be explained by Western theory. In essence, the rise of China is the
rise of China's political soft power, which has significantly helped China deal with challenges, assist developing countries in reducing poverty, and manage global issues. As the China model improves, it will continue to surprise the world.
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Competition Now
Chinese engagement is outpacing the US
Goodman 5-29
[Joshua. Latin America Desk for Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Biden Circles Xi as U.S. Duels China for Latin America Ties 5/29/13 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013 05-29/biden-circles-xi-as-u-s-duels-china-for-latin-america-influence.html]
The competition
between the worlds two biggest economies for influence in Latin America is on
display this week as U.S. Vice President Joe Biden arrives in Rio de Janeiro today near the end of a three-nation tour of the region with Chinese President Xi Jinping close behind. The dueling visits -- Biden departs Brazil May 31, the same day Xi arrives in Trinidad & Tobago to begin his first tour of the region since Chinas political transition ended in March -- underscore how Latin Americas natural resources and rising middle class are making it an increasingly attractive trade partner for the worlds top two economies . Competing with Chinas checkbook isnt easy for the U.S. Seeking South American soy, copper and iron ore, China boosted imports from Latin America 20-fold, to $86 billion in 2011 from $3.9 billion in 2000, according to calculations by the Inter-American Development Bank. By contrast, the U.S. policy of pursuing free-trade accords has been controversial, said Kevin Gallagher, a Boston University economist. If Im a Latin American leader, Im very
happy because I now have more chips to play with, said Gallagher, author of the 2010 book The Dragon in the Room, about Chinas inroads in the region. The
onus is on the U.S. to come up with a more flexible, attractive offer but thats not so easy because it doesnt have the deep pockets like it used to.
Increased China-Mexico economic engagement now

Goodman 5-29
*Joshua. Latin America Desk for Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Biden Circles Xi as U.S. Duels China for Latin America Ties 5/29/13 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/201305-29/biden-circles-xi-as-u-s-duels-china-for-latin-america-influence.html]
Still, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, who visited Beijing in April,
is looking to expand trade and investment with
China , if only to diversify away from the U.S ., buyer of 80 percent of the countrys exports.
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Chinese Influence High

Chinese influence is outpacing the US
Menedez 5-10
*Fernando. The East is rising, in Latin America 5/10/13 http://www.thecommentator.com/article/3488/the_east_is_rising_in_latin_america]

Trade with China has also increased dramatically over the last decade. For example, China now accounts for 19 percent of Brazils total trade as compared with 2.8 percent in 2001. Similarly, China accounts for nearly 20 percent of Chiles total trade in contrast to 5.6 percent a decade ago. China has also concluded free-trade agreements with both Chile and Peru opening up those markets to Chinese manufactured goods. By 2014, China will overtake the European Union as Latin Americas second largest trading partner after the United States. While it still has some way to go in potentially overtaking the United States as the leading trade partner, it is, nevertheless, probable . Most recently, Brazil and China signed an agreement to pay for $30 billion in trade per year using local currencies and thus dropping the dollar. There is also general speculation concerning a new renminbibased currency, which, if it does not replace the dollar or the euro, may well become a significant alternative foreign currency backed by commodities and natural resources. Some even speak of a renminbi trading bloc. All of these moves demonstrate the power of Chinas purse, which the US is increasingly unable to match . The speed and extent of Chinas growth in Latin America also raises concerns about its geopolitical and military policy objectives in the Americas. Many Chinese firms, especially in telecommunications, have longstanding ties to the Peoples Liberation Army, and that should
raise red flags.
Chinas pursuing increased influence in Latin America

Goodman 5-29
*Joshua. Latin America Desk for Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Biden Circles Xi as U.S. Duels China for Latin America Ties 5/29/13 http://www.bloomberg.com/n ews/201305-29/biden-circles-xi-as-u-s-duels-china-for-latin-america-influence.html]
For Xi, his week-long
tour of Trinidad, Costa Rica and Mexico precedes a visit to California for his first face-to-face talks with Obama since taking office. The trip to Latin America and the Caribbean, coming so early in Xis presidency, reflects the rising confidence of the Chinese leadership as it pursues its strategic interests with little concern for U.S. reaction, said Evan Ellis, a professor at the National Defense University in Washington. China in recent years has ousted the U.S. to become the top trade partner for Brazil and Chile. In the past Chinese presidents were very deferential to the U.S., always making reference to Washingtons backyard, said Ellis, the author of dozens of papers and a book about Chinas penetration of Latin America. You dont hear any of that from Xis team, though
you dont find any threatening rhetoric either.
Chinese influence in Latin American trades high now

Shaiken et al 13
Economic ties between China and Mexico have greatly improved , given that Mexico is one of the largest Latin American countries. From 2000 to 2009, China went from being the 19th largest importer of
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Mexican goods to the 7th, while going from 7th place to 2nd in terms of exports to Mexico (ECLAC 2011). By 2011, total trade between China and Mexico has increased significantly, and bilateral trade volume has reached 42.1 billion USD a 19% increase compared to the previous year (MOFCOM 2011). Most importantly, China has become the third largest export destination of Mexican goods. Chinese imports from Mexico increased from 0.09% in 1993 to 1.35% in 2010. In dollar amounts, Chinese imports from Mexico increased from 44.8 million USD in 1993 to 3.7 billion in 2010 (Hernndez Hernndez 2012:65). During the one-year period from 2010 to 2011, Chinese imports from Mexico increased 54.8%, while Mexican imports from China grew 16% (see Table 1).
Its high and growing

Ellis 11
[R. Evan. Assistant Professor of National Security Studies in the Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies at the National Defense University. Chinese Soft Power in Latin America: A Case Study Joint Force Quarterly, Vol 60. 2011. http://www.ndu.edu/press/chinese-soft-power-latin-america.html]
Although the
presence of Chinese corporations and workers in Latin America pales by comparison to that of the United States, it is growing and exerting an increasing weight in select countries. Particularly in states such as Ecuador and Venezuela, Chinese corporations are becoming increasingly critical for the functioning of the extractive industries that generate significant portions of the state's revenue. In Ecuador, Chinese petroleum and service companies directly operate seven oil blocks, are a partner in others through consortiums, and account for almost 40 percent of nonstate oil production, while China Railway Road and Tongling are ramping up for a $3 billion project in the recently opened Ecuadorian mining sector. In Venezuela, Chinese companies are one of the key actors maintaining oil production in the mature oilfields of Maracaibo and Anzotegui, a
vital current revenue stream for the Chvez regime. In the Orinoco belt in the south of Venezuela, Chinese investment, technology, and manpower, including Chinese-made drilling rigs, are a key to the development of that nation's future oil potential, while a May 2010 agreement makes Chinese companies key players in the extraction of Venezuelan iron, gold, bauxite, and coal.7 Although
Chinese companies have yet to attain the level of "key employers" or have a major role in many Latin American communities, they play a growing role in strategically important sectors in many Latin American countries . For example, in
telecommunications, the Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE are increasingly important product, service, and infrastructure providers,8 and in logistics, companies such as China Shipping, China
Overseas Shipping, and Hutchison Whampoa play increasingly vital roles
in Latin America's foreign trade.
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US Engagement Low
US engagement is decreasing
Priest 5-1
[Dana. Latin American Reporter for the Washington Post. U.S. role to decrease as Mexicos drug-war strategy shifts The Washington Post, 5/1/13 ln]
For the past seven years, Mexico and
the United States have forged an unparalleled alliance against Mexicos drug cartels, one based on sharing sensitive intelligence, U.S. training and joint operational planning. But much of that hard-earned cooperation may be in jeopardy . President Obama heads off Thursday on a three-day visit to Mexico to cement relations with the newly elected president, Enrique Pea Nieto, with vows of neighborly kinship and future cooperation. Obamas visit comes as the fight over border security and immigration overhaul has begun to consume Congress . The December inauguration of Pea Nieto brought the nationalistic Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) back to power after 13 years, and with it a whiff of resentment over the deep U.S. involvement in Mexicos fight against narco-traffickers. The new administration has shifted priorities away from the U.S.-backed strategy of arresting kingpins,
which sparked an unprecedented level of violence among the cartels, and toward an emphasis on prevention and keeping Mexicos streets safe and calm, Mexican authorities said.
Chinas outpacing US engagement

Padgett 5-13
*Timothy. Latin America Reporter for TIME. The Obama Administration Looks to Latin America After Years of Neglect TIME, 5/13/13 http://world.time.com/2013/05/13/has-washington-finally-discovered-latinamerica/#ixzz2UhOE2vcE
On the other hand, Latin
America can also be excused if its a little irked if its asking the U.S., Why did you wait so long feels more urgency to look south at the moment largely because of Chinas increasing incursion into the hemisphere: annual ChinaLatin America trade exceeds $200 billion today compared with less than $10 billion in 2000. U.S.Latin America trade may be robust. But this month Sabatinis publication, Americas Quarterly, lays out striking evidence of U.S. decline: in 1995, for example, the U.S. sent Brazil, Latin Americas largest economy and now the worlds sixth largest, more than a fifth of that countrys imports; by 2011 it was 15%, the same share sent from China. Ditto with regard to Brazils exports: in 1995 the U.S.
to make this outreach, if you really are making a genuine outreach? Washington bought 21%, but just 10% in 2011, while for China it was 17%. China, as a result, surpassed the U.S. as Brazils top trading partner in 2009. Whats more, business with the Americas as a share of total U.S. trade has actually dropped over the past decade. The
investment tally is even more striking: in 1995, the U.S. accounted for 37% of Brazils foreign direct investment vs. 10% in 2011 less than Chinas . Granted, its good for Latin America to be less dependent on the U.S. But its hardly unreasonable to conclude that Washington wouldnt be facing this China syndrome in its own hemisphere if it had simply taken high-level engagement on Latin America more seriously a decade or
more ago. Or even four years ago, when Obama took office pledging a more benign U.S. foreign policy toward the region and then used that, say critics, as an excuse for benign neglect.
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AT//Relations High
Relations may be high, but US economic engagement vis--vis China is sufficiently low to generate uniqueness for the DA - Shaiken says trade volume and new sectors of engagement mean future trends ensure Chinese leadership Hold any of their link uniqueness claims to a high threshold US actions never reflect diplomatic rhetoric
Padgett 5-27
*Timothy. Latin America Reporter for TIME Why China Is Behind Fresh U.S. Moves In Latin America WLRN South Florida 5/27/13 http://wlrn.org/post/why-china-behind-fresh-us-moves-latinamerica]
There are of course skeptics. I asked Robert Pastor, a
former White House national security advisor for Latin America and now an international relations professor at American University in Washington, D.C., if he thinks the U.S. is doing enough to keep itself relevant in the Americas. No its not, he says. President Obamas trip (to Mexico and
Central America) is
a good first step, but he needs to do a lot more to open up and show Americas
with the rest of South America. Pastor has a point: for
interest in re-engaging
decades, Latin America has heard a
lot of rhetoric from the U.S. about engagement -- the kind Biden offered the Council of the Americas in Washington recently, when he declared that the hemisphere matters more (to the U.S.) today because it has more potential than any time in American history.
Recent attempts at engagement have failed

Zissis 12
[Carin. Mexico Analyst for the Council of the Americas. Mexicos Pea Nieto Visits Washington to Refocus Relations 11/27/12 http://www.ascoa.org/articles/mexico%E2%80%99s-pe%C3%B1a-nieto-visits-washington-refocusrelations]
But it appears
the American public may not have read the good news . A November 20 Vianovo and GSD&M
the word
survey found that half of Americans have an unfavorable view of Mexico, with drugs being
most frequently
associated
with it. As many as 59
percent of those surveyed viewed Mexico as a source of problems perception persists, even as signs indicate a turning
compared to just 14 percent considering it a good partner. This
tide in terms of the drug-related violence that marked the six-year term of outgoing President Felipe Caldern. An AnimalPolitico
analysis (translated into English by InSight Crime) reports that 20 of Mexicos 32 states saw fewer homicides between January and October in 2012 compared to the same period last year. Areas associated with high rates of violence saw notable drops, with homicides decreasing by 32 percent in Chihuahua, 25 percent in Nuevo Leon, and 23 percent in Sinaloa. Last month, Ciudad Juarez logged fewer homicides than Chicago. *A+re we still in a security crisis? asks the articles author, Mexican security expert Alejandro Hope. I would say no: crime and violence continue (and will continue for a while) at unacceptable levels, but
it can no longer be so easily argued that the situation
is escalating out of control.
More evidence even recent attempts at improved relations will fail too many barriers
Farnsworth 5-8
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[Eric. Leader of the Washington Office of the Council of the Americas. He was the Clinton Administrations Senior Adviser to the White House Special Envoy for the Americas. Obamas Mexico Trip Yielded Progress, Missed Opportunities 5/8/13 http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/12934/obama-s-mexico-trip-yieldedprogress-missed-opportunities]
At the same time, a
number of obstacles to growth must be addressed if the bilateral relationship is to
reach its full potential. Many of these are domestic issues that each nation should resolve for its own self-interest but that would nonetheless meaningfully improve the bilateral economic relationship. Among these are, from Mexicos side, reforms in fiscal, energy and competition policy, as well as the continuing implementation of labor and education reforms. Working with Mexicos other two main political parties, Pena Nietos Institutional Revolution Party (PRI) has successfully begun the reform process. But the Mexican presidents honeymoon period is coming to an end, and the most difficult issues remain unresolved. From the U.S. perspective, comprehensive immigration reform would boost the economy by regularizing, and therefore capitalizing on, immigrant workers already in the United States contributing to economic production. The United States would also do well to quickly pass the transboundary hydrocarbons agreement with Mexico, which would open up opportunities for cooperation with Mexican state energy company Pemex in the Gulf of Mexico.
More evidence instances of increased cooperation are meaningless

Farnsworth 5-8
[Eric. Leader of the Washington Office of the Council of the Americas. He was the Clinton Administrations Senior Adviser to the White House Special Envoy for the Americas. Obamas Mexico Trip Yielded Progress, Missed Opportunities 5/8/13 http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/12934/obama-s-mexico-trip-yieldedprogress-missed-opportunities]
The presidents visit to Mexico was timely and symbolically important. It was designed to shift the narrative about U.S.-Mexico relations, and several concrete initiatives were announced. But the trip seemingly did little to promote or capture a larger ambition for the relationship . Both sides will need to think bigger to take the
relationship to the next level.
The turn to economics is not substantive the security focus will return and theres no coherent economic agenda
Fossett 5/28/13
(Katelyn, In U.S.-Mexico Relations, a Shift from Security to Economy, Interpress Service News, www.ipsnews.net/2013/04/in-u-s-mexico-relations-a-shift-fromsecurity-to-economy/)
Developments Achilles heel Still, for a country like Mexico that is still struggling with issues of citizen security and rampant crime, many suggest that economic
growth would have to start from the bottom, with more robust social programmes and safety Arnson, director of the Latin America programme at the Wilson Center, calls Latin America far behind in developing policies that might leverage inclusive growth. There is not a sense of shared responsibility when your
nets, before the international community becomes too optimistic about economic and trade booms. Cynthia social policy is remittance, when your lack of social policy is permitted, she told reporters on Friday. The region, she said, needs a widespread recognition of the role the private sector needs to play in paying taxes, improving government *and+ institutions. In
a telephone interview with IPS, she noted that the U.S. relationship with Central America is likely to remain more focused on security concerns. There is a growing consensus in the development community that sustainable growth cant and will
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not happen unless levels of violence are brought under control, she told IPS. The World Bank recently called citizen insecurity the Achilles heel of development in Latin America. Members
of the U.S. Congress and advocacy groups here are also wary of turning a blind eye to human rights concerns in Mexico. The dire human rights situation in Mexico is not going to solve
itself, Maureen Meyer, a senior associate for Mexico and Central America with the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), an advocacy group, said in a statement. As
the bilateral agenda evolves, it is critical that the U.S. and Mexican governments continue to focus on how best to support and defend human rights in Mexico. In a press
release issued last week, WOLA expressed agreement with a letter from 23 members of Congress to Secretary of State John Kerry that stressed that *t+he human rights crisis will not improve until there are stronger legal protections, increased human rights training for Mexicos security forces, and more government agents held responsible for the human rights violations they commit. Even
as the focus of U.S.Mexico relations turns to economics, there is no broad agreement on how exactly a shift toward trade relations will strengthen the economic competitiveness of both countries. Part of the challenge is that we have this term, but we have a laundry list of issues that could fit into that term, the Mexico Institutes Chris Wilson said. What we still dont have is a coherent agenda or a way in which the leadership from the top level can engage the public or business community or civil society and create something more *meaningful+, he
told IPS.
Some collaboration might be inevitable, but the increase in economic engagement facilitated by the plan is distinct
Stratfor 13
*Stratfor Global Intelligence. Evolving U.S.-Mexico Relations and Obama's Visit 5/2/13 http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/evolving-us-mexico-relations-and-obamas-visit ]
Domestic political factors will determine the success of the pending overhauls. But the labor reform could improve bilateral commerce and investment with the United States, as would a successful liberalization of the country's energy sector in the coming years. Mexico is already the United States' thirdlargest trading partner, and economic coordination between the two countries has become a routine matter at the ministerial level, but there is still a need to ease bureaucratic trade and investment barriers .
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AT//TPP Thumper
TPP will divide Latin America doesnt secure trade or US influence
Wagner and Parker 5-16
[Dan. CEO of Country Risk Solutions, an International Risk Advisory Firm. And Nick is a Research Analyst with the Congressional Research Service. Is the Trans-Pacific Partnership the Solution to Latin America's Fractured Trade Regime? The Huffington Post, 5/16/13 ln]
Latin America is poised to assume a starring role in the governance of international trade, with a Brazilian having been selected to lead the World Trade Organization and the Trans-Pacific Partnership ( TPP ) set to enter its 17th round of talks in Peru
later this month. Many hope an agreement on the TPP will provide a much-needed boost to a still prostrate global economy, but what is being
widely hailed as profound progress in the evolution of trade integration globally is having the opposite effect in Latin America. Rather than deepening trade ties within the region, the TPP is serving to expose and exacerbate underlying political and economic fractures , raising question about how deep Latin American trade cooperation can be, and whether the Americas are fated to continue to be divided along trade policy lines. Praised as a cutting edge agreement to address 21st century cross-border commercial issues, the TPP will unite a dozen nations with the goal of establishing a core free trade area for the Asia-Pacific region. The bloc will account for more than 30% of global GDP and 20% of the world's exports -- which
would grow considerably with the inclusion of Japan and South Korea - which are both actively exploring entry in the Partnership. Many potential signatories, including the U.S., have expressed a desire for conclusion of the Partnership this year. As is the case with any multilateral negotiation, getting to the finish line has not been easy. The
derailment of negotiations over the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA) and the Doha Development Round had a significant impact on the perceived realism of regional trade agreements, while negatively effecting Latin America's ability to uniformly and robustly engage with its largest trading partners. The radically different trade policy paths that have emerged - pitting the notion of collaboration against economic nationalism -- have given rise to a region divided over how, and whether, it should approach trade liberalization going forward.
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Link
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Link: Economic Engagement

Increasing economic engagement and support for police and security forces creates strategic harmony between Obama and Nietos priorities which strengthens US Mexican relations
de Castro 12
(Rafael Fernndez chair of the international studies department at the Autonomous Technological University of Mexico, Viewpoints: What Should the Top Priority Be for U.S. Mexican Relations? American Society/Council of the Americas, 12/3/12, www.as-coa.org/articles/viewpoints-what-should-top-priority-be-us-mexicanrelations)
Brand new President Enrique Pea Nieto has three priorities in Mexicos bilateral relations with the United States. The first priority is to take advantage of the opportunity that was created by the weight of the Hispanic vote in favor of Barack Obamas reelection to achieve immigration reform. It is Pea Nietos task to help Obama create the foundation for immigration reform, not with demands but through actions. He must therefore align Mexicos objectives with those of the United States: they must consistently seek legal, safe and orderly migration. Furthermore, he must do some serious housekeeping, preventing abuses against Central American migrants from
Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. And, he must develop a stable southern border, one that counts with a state presence and adequate infrastructure. The spirit of the transformation of the southern border must preserve the positive aspects of border integration processes while achieving efficiency in formal operations that will allow it to triumph over illegality. The second priority is to take advantage of more favorable economic winds in both Mexico and the United States. Pea Nieto
must prioritize an agenda of economic integration and greater regional competitiveness. The Mexican and Canadian entry into the Trans Pacific Partnership negotiations signify an opportunity to harmonize stances between the three members of NAFTA to amplify markets in Asia. Mexico will be hosting the 2013 North American Leaders Summit, and Pea Nieto should thus be able to push a new regional strategic agenda that includes safer and efficient borders and the standardization of production. The third priority is to maintain the aid flows that help combat organized crime and drug trafficking in the face of a U.S. fiscal crisis that can threaten these resources. Here Pea Nieto must emphasize three elements: agree with Washingtons priority that it help strengthen Mexicos law enforcement institutions (police, judges, and prisons); develop a regional vision that includes Central America; and insist on an open debate that finally
puts the decriminalization of drugs on the table.
An economic approach to relations draws Mexico closer to the US

Valencia 5/20/13
(Robert contributing writer for Global Voices Online, New York-based political analyst, U.S. and Latin America Economic Cooperation Without Militarization? www.worldpolicy.org/blog/2013/05/20/us-and-latin-america-economic-cooperationwithout-militarization)
In May, President Barack Obama visited Mexico and Costa Rica and vowed to strengthen economic ties with these two countries and the rest of Latin America. He pledged to expand renewable energy development and education initiatives in recognition of the joined fates of the United States and Latin America. This approach to Latin America is refreshing, but its impact on the ongoing War on Drugs remains to be seen. Undoubtedly, the United States bears much of the responsibility for the failed campaign, but the
Obama administration has seen that some Latin American countries are taking their own lead in tackling the drug trade and are increasingly relying less on Washington. The Obama administration, for its part, has realized that shifting the legendary treatment of Latin America as the U.S. backyard to an economic approach would draw Latin America closer to Washington, especially given the fact that Latin American leaders like Mexicos Enrique Pea Nieto and Brazilian President Dilma Rouseff want to be considered trade partners and not U.S. subordinates.
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Link: North American Competitiveness

Increasing economic engagement in movement of supplies across the border is crucial to North American competitiveness
Shapiro 12
(Charles Shapiro, president of the Institute of Americas, a public policy think tank at the University of California San Diego, Viewpoints: What Should the Top Priority Be for U.S. Mexican Relations? American Society/Council of the Americas, 12/3/12, www.as-coa.org/articles/viewpoints-what-should-top-priority-be-us-mexicanrelations)
At the 2009 Summit of the Americas, President Barack Obama stressed that he wanted a relationship of equals. It is time for Obama and President Enrique Pea Nieto to transform U.S.-Mexican bilateral relations into a true partnership. The
headlines always go to energy, drugs, and immigration. And yes, Mexican leaders must figure out how to produce more oil and natural gas. Yes, the
United States must reduce our appetite for drugs and control the illicit export of weapons and drug money. U.S. politicians will reform our immigration policy when they understand that we need Mexican workers and that anti-Latino sentiments will cost them elections. What
is vital, if less sexy, is to realize that Canada, Mexico, and the United States are one economic entity. The focus must be on North American competitiveness. While respecting national sovereignty, we need to recognize that supply chains straddle borders. The manufactured exports of each contain components from all three. NAFTA was the cutting edge laptop of 1992. Its time for the North American equivalent of the iPhone 5. We must accelerate the movement of sub-components and finished products (and tourists) across our borders. We need to make it easier for technicians to work temporarily in each others countries. We need to harmonize our regulations and standards. Together the three nations need to develop markets with the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the European Union, APEC, and the
Pacific Alliance. Thats how to generate growth in all three North American nations.
Efforts to create a 21st century border are the most important components of broader North American competitiveness
Leycegui 12
(Beatriz Leycegui Senior Fellow at the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development in Geneva, Viewpoints: What Should the Top Priority Be for U.S. Mexican Relations? American Society/Council of the Americas, 12/3/12, www.ascoa.org/articles/viewpoints-what-should-top-priority-be-us-mexican-relations)
One of their top priorities should be to address with a greater sense of urgency the bilateral and North American competitiveness agenda. The Mexican and U.S. economies are highly integrated and interdependent. If their economies
do well, the impact on job creation is immediate. The U.S. is Mexicos most important export market; Mexico is the U.S.s second most important export market. Of every dollar the U.S. imports of Mexican goods, 40 percent have American content, in comparison to Chinas (4 percent), Brazils (3 percent), or Indias (2 percent). Due to the reduction in the differential in labor costs between Mexico and China (in 2003, it stood at 237 percent; in 2010, at 13.8 percent) and increases in energy and transport costs, investment and production are returning to North America. The
most important elements of the North American competitiveness agenda should include: expediting the work to create a twenty-first-century border (infrastructure, risk management, pre-clearance, customs cooperation); strengthen regulatory cooperation (mutual recognition of regulations); liberalization of strategic services (e.g. telecommunications, air, land and sea transportation), and the improvement in the enforcement of intellectual property laws. The Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations can be an opportunity to advance some of these issues.
Mexico and the United States cannot fight geography. Why would Mexico forego the benefit of being next to the most important economy of the world? Why would the United States ignore the possibility of further integrating with a country that has proven to be a partner in production more than a competitor?
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Link: Border Infrastructure

Creating a modern border infrastructure is crucial to developing the Mexico-US commercial relationship
New Policy Institute 2/9/12
(Research Team of Alejandro Figueroa, Research and Policy Analyst, NACTS Erik Lee, Associate Director, NACTS Rick Van Schoik, Director, NACTS, Realizing the Full Value of Crossborder Trade with Mexico, North American Center for Transborder Studies)
Sharing a 2,000-mile long border needs to be recognized as both a challenge and an opportunity. While land ports of entry between the two nations were first envisioned to process the legitimate crossing of people, goods and services across the border, security has taking a dominant role in recent years, hampering the ability of federal agencies to efficiently manage border traffic. Advances in border infrastructure simply did not happen during the last decade, which is astounding given the greatly expanded post-NAFTA binational commercial relationship. Our
borders infrastructure and capacity today reflects the needs of a bygone era. This became evident as never before when on September 14, 2011, the San Ysidro, California port of entry the busiest land port of entry in the world had to shut down its 24 north-bound lanes due to the collapse of part of its roof, injuring several people and
damaging vehicles trying to cross into the U.S. from Tijuana, Mexico. According to a report by the San Diego Association of Governments,
inadequate infrastructure capacity just at the border crossings between San Diego County and the state of Baja California creates traffic congestion and delays that cost both the U.S. and Mexican economies on average an estimated $7.2 billion in forgone gross output and more than 62,000 jobs on an annual basis. These border delays could cause $86 billion in output losses over the next ten years.
The border has been a filter to what shouldnt get in, when it can be a facilitator to what should get in. Rachel Poynter, U.S. State Department These delays are significant for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that American firms are constantly attempting to reduce their inventory costs in an attempt to remain competitive. While importing from China to the U.S. may require a company to hold more than 100 days of inventory, if efficiently managed, our proximity to Mexico can provide American firms with a constant and predictable flow of goods that may reduce inventory costs and provide firms the ability to respond rapidly and effectively to sudden market changes. With this fundamental fact in mind, in May of 2010 the U.S. and Mexico signed the 21st Century Border Management Joint Declaration. Recognizing
the importance of fostering the commercial relationship, both countries have agreed to coordinate efforts to enhance the economic competitiveness by expediting lawful trade. The idea is that development of modern and secure 16 border infrastructure will give an added boost to our regions competitiveness in the world and at the same time increase our access to a wider, more affordable and ever improving quality set
of goods.
Binational infrastructure building is crucial for economic integration

Today more than 75,000 trucks (carrying close to 80 % of our two-way trade) cross our border on a daily basis. That this much traffic is able to cross our congested borders is due in part to important advances in border infrastructure in the last couple of years as new ports of entry have been opened. One important policy development is master planning processes for regional border infrastructure, which have been initiated in conjunction with local border communities and state governments. It
is hoped that these regional processes will eventually make the overall binational infrastructure-building process more transparent, more robust and ultimately a better fit for two such powerful economies and next door neighbors. Much Opportunity, but the Real Work Has Only Just Begun Total trade between the United States and Mexico has expanded by more than 600% since 1990. Yet we need further commitment and investment in the infrastructure needed to sustain such growth, which is critical for both economies. The question now is whether our current border management system will be able to sustain that growth, and if so, for how much longer. A strong trade/joint production relationship with Mexico can help create high-quality jobs within our borders. For reasons of geography and history, Mexicos fate is intertwined with that of the United States. And despite the current global economic environment,
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and transnational organized crime affecting Mexico and the United States, the two countries need to implement a 21st Century border that not only re-invigorates crossborder trade and economic integration but which will also lead to increased safety and quality of life for the residents of both countries. Both countries need to remain committed to promoting the global competitiveness of our region and to ensuring that the benefits of expanding trade flows keep reaching businesses, workers and consumers on both sides of our shared border. We will be able to accomplish this if leaders can explain the critical nature of our commercial relationships in ways that are more concrete and easier for citizens to understand. It is past time for our shared border to begin to meet tomorrows demands, acting as a facilitator and conductor of the lawful flows of goods, services and people between our nations, so that we may capitalize on the full potential of our partnership. If a billion dollars worth of trade crosses the U.S. -Mexico border on a daily basis and sustains six million jobs in the U.S., imagine what could be accomplished with a truly 21st century border.
Enhanced border infrastructure is critical to the North American competitiveness

Sharing a 2,000-mile long border with Mexico needs to be recognized as both a challenge and an opportunity. Though improving, our borders current infrastructure and capacity today reflect the needs of a bygone era. While land ports of entry between the two nations were first envisioned to process the legitimate crossing of people, goods and services across the border, security has taking an overwhelmingly dominant role in recent years, hampering the ability of agencies to efficiently manage border traffic. With this in mind, in May of 2010 the U.S. and Mexico signed the 21st Century Border Management Joint Declaration. Recognizing the importance of fostering the commercial relationship, both countries have agreed to coordinate efforts to enhance economic competitiveness by expediting lawful trade. The
basic idea is that developing a modern and secure border infrastructure will give an added boost to our regions safety and competitiveness in the world. Much Opportunity, but the Real Work Has Only Just Begun The poor infrastructure, the inadequate staffing levels and the heavy focus on security that prevails at the U.S. Mexico border have cost both economies billions of dollars in gross output annually. It is past time for our
shared border to begin to meet todays demands, acting as a facilitator and conductor of lawful flows of goods, services and people across our nations so that we may capitalize on the full potential of our partnership. If
a billion dollars worth of trade crosses the U.S.Mexico border on a daily basis now while sustaining six million jobs, imagine what could be accomplished with a truly 21st century border. 4 An Introduction to our Unknown Neighbor, Mexico It is imperative for
the United States to engage in a national conversation regarding the value of economic integration and interdependence, cross-border trade with Mexico, and the cost of inefficiencies at our long and dynamic shared border. As the U.S. economy struggles to create high-quality jobs and the export sector assumes more importance, our nation needs to discover every dollar of value in the relationship with our na tions number two export market: Mexico. There
is no other relationship for the United States that is as dismissed and yet ironically as crucial for our countrys well-being as the one with Mexico, a country with a population of over 113
million people. Mexico is much more than a country with which we just happen to share a 2,000 mile long land border. Although it is often unknown to us, it is important to realize that Mexico
is one of our most significant commercial partners in the world. To illustrate Mexicos overall development and the trends in its development, we can look a few examples from its physical infrastructure, its human capital, what it produces and its trade relationships. To begin with, in 2010 Mexico invested an unprecedented five percent of its GDP in infrastructure. With 76 seaports along its 11,000 kilometers of seashore on the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, 85 airports, 26,700 kilometers of railroad and 366,000 kilometers of road, Mexico is one of the most interconnected countries in the entire hemisphere (see
Figure 1 below).
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Link: Access Roads

Access road improvements cement US influence
Negroponte 12
(Diana Negroponte, a nonresident senior fellow with the Latin America Initiative under Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution, Viewpoints: What Should the Top Priority Be for U.S. Mexican Relations? American Society/Council of the Americas, 12/3/12, www.as-coa.org/articles/viewpoints-what-should-top-priority-beus-mexican-relations)
Deepening the trade relationship and facilitating the shipment of component parts between Mexico and the United States requires the creation of access roads some eight miles ahead of the principal border crossings. With electronic submission of customs/immigration documentation and with electronic seals on transnational containers, trucks filled with bilaterally manufactured products can more rapidly pass across the borde r. Currently, the trucks are delayed principally for lack of access roads leading up to the border, especially on the Mexican side. In order to construct these roads, private-public partnerships are needed. The NADBANK, established 20 years ago to support
environmental projects, is the best placed to mobilize these partnerships. The bank's bylaws permit this. However, the environmental impact needs to be interpreted broadly. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) could recognize that new roads relieve the congestion and high levels of air pollutants at the border crossing itself. Use of access roads may spread pollution further inland, but the levels of pollutants will be significantly lower than those currently suffered each side of the Rio Grande. NADBANKs
initiative and the White House leadership to facilitate EPA approval could lead to the development of access roads and decongestion at the actual border. Mexican presidential encouragement to NADBANK's directors to seek PPPs and U.S. presidential urging to the EPA for a broad interpretation of its mandate could result in a decade's work of new infrastructure projects. This will facilitate the anticipated tripling of cross-border trade as both countries negotiate a Trans-Pacific Partnership and Mexico negotiates a Pacific Trade Alliance with its South American partners. Presidential decisions to advance
on instructing NADBANK to move forward with PPPs for these infrastructure projects are relatively easy. Their consequences will enhance the trade and prosperity of both nations.
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Link: Security Cooperation

Increasing security cooperation secures US influence
Seelke 13
*Claire. Specialist in Mexico Affairs at the Congressional Research Service. Mexico and the 112th Congress 1/29/13 http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL32724.pdf+
U.S. policy toward Mexico has been framed by security cooperation under the Mrida Initiative. Congress has provided more than $1.9 billion in Mrida aid since FY2008 to support Mexicos efforts against drug trafficking and organized crime. Whereas U.S. assistance initially focused on training and equipping Mexican counterdrug forces , it
In recent years,
now prioritizes strengthening the rule of law. Along the border, U.S. policymakers have sought to balance security and commercial concerns. The U.S. and Mexican governments resolved a longstanding trade dispute in 2011 involving NAFTA trucking provisions and have sought to improve competitiveness through regulatory cooperation. Bilateral trade surpassed $460 billion in 2011.The February 2012 signing of a Trans-Boundary Hydrocarbons Agreement for managing oil resources in the Gulf of Mexico could create new opportunities for energy cooperation.
Reforming cross-border regulations is the overarching factor in the U.S.-Mexico bilateral relationship
Jones 12
(James Jones chairman and CEO of MannattJones Global Strategies and former U.S. ambassador to Mexico (1993-1997), Viewpoints: What Should the Top Priority Be for U.S. Mexican Relations? American Society/Council of the Americas, 12/3/12, www.as-coa.org/articles/viewpoints-what-should-top-priority-be-us-mexicanrelations)
The overarching goal of our bilateral relationship should be to thoroughly integrate the economies of North America. Democracy and security are strengthened when commerce flows and grows. This creates wealth, opens new jobs, and establishes better personal relationships in both countries. To achieve this, we can work together to reduce the regulatory barriers to efficient trade by harmonizing cross-border regulations and modernizing border infrastructure. The U.S. must pass comprehensive immigration reform that recognizes reality in our labor
needs and legal protections for immigrants who are here helping build our economy. The U. S. must implement a debt reduction program combining serious spending cuts and revenue increases to give certainty and new impetus to growing our economy. Mexico must implement
judicial and law enforcement reforms that will give confidence to businesses and citizens that a rule of law prevails there. Energy reforms are needed to attract private capital to fully realize Mexico's abundant opportunities. Mexico needs
tax reform that increases revenue, reduces the informal economy, and provides the framework to close the deep wealth divide among its citizens. To accomplish this and to further reduce the 40 million living in poverty, Mexico needs to make massive investments in infrastructure and quality education. Mexico's growing middle class is impressive but to expand that even more will create market and economic power that will be the envy of the hemisphere. North America sits near the pinnacle of its greatest economic strength in history. Together we can take it to the top.
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Link: Immigration / Trade

Engaging Mexico on trade and immigration reform is crucial to move the US-Mexican relationship from one of necessity to a strategic alliance
Garza 12
(Antonio Garza former U.S. ambassador to Mexico (2002-2009), Viewpoints: What Should the Top Priority Be for U.S. Mexican Relations? American Society/Council of the Americas, 12/3/12, www.as-coa.org/articles/viewpoints-what-should-top-prioritybe-us-mexican-relations)
The United States and Mexico have enjoyed a very healthy and respectful relationship. On issues of shared interestprimarily trade and securityweve cooperated, though mostly out of necessity. Yet neither country has ever truly leveraged the bilateral relationship strategically. What will it take to bring about this kind
of fundamental shift? A first step is to get rid of outdated perceptionson both sides. You simply cant expect to have a strategic relationship that functions in real time if perceptions lag present realities. Theres been new research and insightful commentary recently highlighting the gap between Americans perceptions of Mexico and the countrys current reality. President Enrique Pea Nieto faces the daunting task of moving Main Street U.S. perceptions of Mexico closer to where the views of economists, investors, and discerning travelers are on the country. He will help this along by conveying his administrations absolute commitment to carrying through promised economic reforms, implementing anti-corruption and transparency initiatives, and reinforcing cooperation on security. For President Obama,
its important to
signal that his new team is completely schooled in the reality of todays Mexico and that they are prepared to take advantage of the moment to recast the relationship to the benefit of both countries. Delivering on immigration reform and the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement are rare opportunities for a U.S. administration to fundamentally alter Mexicans perceptions of their northern partner. As Mexicos place in the world rises and the U.S. continues to recalibrate its foreign alliances, theres a unique opportunity to move the bilateral relationship to a more strategic levelbut it will take some work.
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Trade Key
Commercial relationship is crucial to both Mexico and US economies
The United States urgently needs a sustained national conversation regarding how to realize greater value in our crossborder trade with Mexico, and the benefits of increasing efficiencies at our shared border. As the export sector assumes more importance and the U.S. economy struggles to create high-quality jobs, our nation needs to
discover every dollar of value in our relationship with our nations number two export market: Mexico. Trade with Mexico: An Abundance of Value That Is Hidden In Plain Sight Trade
is an important tool in policymakers economic development toolbox. Ever since the enactment of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and given the complementarity of the U.S. and
Mexican economies, bilateral trade has grown exponentially, reaching a record high of nearly $400 billion in 2010. Mexico is now the thirdranked commercial partner of the U.S. and the second largest market for U.S. exports. Mexico
spent $163 billion on U.S. goods in 2010, and trade with Mexico sustains six million jobs in the U.S. This is economic value that for many in the U.S. remains hidden in plain sight. To provide a better idea of what this commercial partnership means to our country, U.S. sales to Mexico are larger than all U.S. exports to the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) combined, as well as all combined sales to Great Britain, France, Belgium and the Netherlands . Twenty-two states count Mexico as their No. 1 or No. 2 export market, and it is a top-five market for 14 other
states. American consumers and businesses import large quantities of jointly produced products and services from Mexico such as automobiles, produce, and petroleum, just to name a few. Still, for
every dollar Mexico makes from exporting to the U.S., it will in turn spend 50 cents on U.S. products or services, which are a considerable benefit to our economy and demonstrates the truly unique quality of this trade or joint production relationship.
The economic component of the alliance is comparatively most important

Seelke 13
*Claire. Specialist in Mexico Affairs at the Congressional Research Service. Mexico and the 112th Congress 1/29/13 http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL32724.pdf+
The United States and Mexico have a close and complex bilateral relationship as neighbors and partners under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Although security issues have recently dominated the U.S. relationship with Mexico, analysts predict that bilateral relations may shift toward economic matters now that President Enrique Pea Nieto has taken office. Pea Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) defeated leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) candidate Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador and Josefina Vzquez Mota of the conservative National Action Party (PAN) in Mexicos July 1, 2012 presidential election. As a result, the PRI, which controlled Mexico from 1929 to 2000, retook the presidency on December 1, 2012. Some analysts have raised concerns regarding the PRIs return to power, but President Pea Nieto has pledged to govern democratically and to forge cross-party alliances.
Economic cooperation is the new orientation of the alliance

Stratfor 13
[Stratfor Global Intelligence. Evolving U.S.-Mexico Relations and Obama's Visit 5/2/13 http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/evolving-us-mexico-relations-and-obamas-visit ]
When U.S. President Barack Obama travels to Mexico on May 2, he will arrive amid a period of sweeping transformation in the country. Embroiled in myriad political battles and seeking to implement an extensive slate of national reforms, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto's administration has been focused almost solely on internal affairs. Meanwhile, after years of delay, the U.S. Congress has been debating gun control and immigration reform -- two issues of serious
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interest to the Mexican government. U.S.-Mexican
[AUTHOR NAME]
relations are strategically important to both countries, and Mexico's period of transition has created opportunities for each to reshape the partnership. And although
U.S. media attention has focused primarily on bilateral security issues ahead of Obama's visit -- namely cooperation in Mexico's drug war --
the Pena Nieto administration is working with Washington to re-orient the cross-border conversation to one centered primarily on mutual economic possibility .
The economic aspect of the bilateral relationship is becoming increasingly important new working group and both leaders are distancing themselves from security and immigration issues
Thomson 5/3/13
(Adam, US and Mexico Agree Closer Economic Ties, Financial Times, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/01c6d678-b37e-11e2-b5a500144feabdc0.html#axzz2U4qzm61q)
The governments of Mexico and the US on Thursday agreed to form a group to deepen economic integration as part of efforts to broaden the bilateral relationship and boost North American competitiveness. At a press conference with US President Barack Obama, Enrique Pea Nieto of Mexico said the group would comprise
Mexican ministers and their US counterparts, and include input from Joe Biden, the US vice-president. It would meet for the first time in the autumn. The Mexican president said the idea was to act as an enabler ... in terms of how government can support efforts by the private sector to have a strong economic integration. The
announcement goes some way to meeting Mr Pea Nietos objectives of widening relations with Mexicos northern neighbour, which in recent years have been dominated by security and immigration issues. Mr Pea Nieto, who took office in December, has said that he intends to reorient his
countrys role in the fight against drugs, prioritising efforts that lead to a reduction in violence over the pursuit of drug-cartel kingpins.
Some experts have interpreted that as a deliberate desire to create some distance from the US on the security issue, with the potential to downgrade what has undoubtedly been a period of co-operation for both countries against organised
crime. But on Thursday Mr Obama, who is on a three-day visit to Mexico and Central America, said he supported Mr Pea Nietos intentions of reducing the murder rate, which has almost tripled in the past six years largely as a consequence of the military-led fight against the cartels. Saying that he and Mr Pea Nieto had discussed the security issue in depth, Mr Obama added that it is up to the Mexican people to determine their security structures ... we support the Mexican governments focus on reducing violence. Mr Obama also commended his Mexican counterpart on an ambitious economic reform agenda including the central goal to raise Mexicos annual growth rates to as high as 6 per cent within the next six years. The US leader called Mexicos reform programme a necessary change. On
the high-level working group, Mr Obama said it was necessary to upgrade and revamp the two countries trade relationship. Since the signing of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), bilateral trade has flourished and is now worth about $1.4bn a day. Mr Obama said that it was important to do more. We cant lose sight of the larger relationship, he said, calling it a historic opportunity to foster more trade and more jobs on both sides of the border.
The focus for the bilateral agenda is shifting to economics

Grayson 5/21/13
(George W. - Professor of Government at the College of William & Mary, Strategic Posture Review: Mexico, www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/12961/strategic-posture-review-mexico)
Instead, both
sides are eager to reframe the bilateral agenda and shift the emphasis to trade and energy. During Obamas recent visit to Mexico City, both presidents pledged to concentrate more on commerce and business, which have been eclipsed by the drug war. In an April 2013 meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry, Mexican Foreign Secretary Jose Antonio Meade sounded a similar note, also stressing the need to transcend drug issues and concentrate more on trade and investment. Meade pointed out that Mexico is the most important export market for 22 of the 50 [U.S.] states, and added that the U.S. exports more to Mexico than it does to China and Japan combined.
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China
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Ext. Internal Link

Improved US-Mexico relations crowd out China
Fischer 12
*Howard. Analyst for Capitol Media. Fox says US-Mexico ties deter China's influence 9/14/12 http://azstarnet.com/news/local/border/fox-says-us-mexico-ties-deter-china-s-influence/article_b8fd3834-acdc-5b33-b1fbd983fdf8d2de.html]
Former Mexican President Vicente Fox said the benefits of migrant labor -
United States has to bolster ties with Mexico - including recognizing the or get used to the idea of China setting the international agenda on its own
terms . "The threat is this so-called power shift from the West to the East ," he told a press conference Thursday at an economic development event organized by the city of Peoria. "Those nations on the East are getting ready and prepared to lead," Fox explained, saying there are forecasts showing the Chinese economy will be larger than that of the United States within a dozen years. "And that means a very important question to all of us: Under what principles are those leading nations (going to) be exercising their leadership?" Fox said. His point: The U.S. would be better off dealing with Mexico and other Latin American countries than perhaps those with different worldviews. "We have our values in the West that we share," Fox said. "So we all on this continent, especially North America, must get ready to meet that challenge." That means bolstering the economies of the United States and Mexico , he said. If the West wants to keep its edge, Fox said, there needs to be a recognition that Mexicans in the United States, legally or not, contribute to the economy of both countries. And that, he said, will require resolving the issue of who can come to this country and under what circumstances. "It has to be based on humanism, on compassion, on love, on friendship, on neighborhood and on partnership that we have together," Fox said. "Otherwise, we will keep losing the jobs to the East." Fox, who served as president from 2000 to 2006, insisted he is not in favor of "open borders." "But I am in favor of the use of our talent, our wisdom, our intelligence," Fox said. And that requires finally filling the vacuum of what kind of laws on immigration are necessary. In his speech, Fox did not address Arizona's approval of SB 1070 two years ago in an effort to
give state and local police more power to detain and arrest suspected illegal immigrants. But in response to a question afterward, he said Arizona and other states have waded into the fray with their own laws out of frustration with the lack of action in Washington. "At the very end, migration is a national issue," Fox said. With immigration reform stalled in Congress, "state governments and state legislatures have been forced to get involved." Fox said that what's needed now is for lawmakers in Washington to come up with at least a framework for reform. "We need to know what the playground is and what the rules of the game are," he said, calling on leaders to "put aside xenophobia, put aside all of our complaints that we might have, and sit down and discuss the differences." Fox said it also needs to be recognized that
this is not just a one-way relationship, saying Mexico buys $250 billion of U.S. products every year, meaning "millions of jobs" to this country's economy.
Chinas market potential, influence in Latin America, and perception of emergence are key to influence
Ellis 11
The concept of soft
power was introduced in 1990 by Harvard Professor Joseph Nye, who defined it as "a dynamic created by a nation whereby other nations seek to imitate that nation, become closer to that nation, and align its interests accordingly."1 Although the term is used to refer to a range of concepts, this article analyzes Chinese soft power in terms of the willingness of governments and other actors in the international system to orient themselves and behave in ways that benefit the PRC because they believe doing so to be in their own interests.
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Such a definition, by necessity, is incomplete. There are many reasons why other actors may decide that actions beneficial to the PRC are also in their own interests: they may feel an affinity for the Chinese culture and people and the objectives of its government, they may expect to receive economic or political benefits from such actions, or they may even calculate that the costs or risks of "going against" the PRC are simply too great. Soft power is a compelling concept, yet it operates through vaguely defined mechanisms. In the words of Nye, "in a global information age...success depends not only on whose army wins, but on whose story wins."2 The implications of soft power in the contemporary environment are difficult to evaluate because they involve a complex web of interconnected effects and feedback in which the ultimate results of an action go far beyond the initial stimulus and the ultimate importance of an influence goes far beyond what is initially apparent. This article examines Chinese soft power in the specific context of Latin America. The United States has long exercised significant influence in the region, while the PRC has historically been relatively absent. Nonetheless, in recent years, China's economic footprint in Latin America, and its attempts to engage the region politically, culturally, and otherwise,
has expanded
enormously . Understanding the nature and limits of PRC soft power in Latin America casts light on Chinese soft power in other parts of the world as well. In general, the bases of Chinese soft power differ from those of the United States, leading
analysts to underestimate that power when they compare the PRC to the United States on those factors that are the sources of U.S. influence, such as the affinity of the world's youth for American music, media, and lifestyle, the widespread use of the English language in business and technology, or the number of elites who have learned their professions in U.S. institutions. It is also important to clarify that
soft power is based on perceptions and emotion (that is, inferences), and not necessarily on objective reality. Although China's current trade with and investment position in Latin America are still limited compared to those of the United States,3 its influence in the region is based not so much on the current size of those activities, but rather on hopes or fears in the region of what it could be in the future . Because perception drives soft power , the nature of the PRC impact on each country in Latin America is shaped by its particular situation, hopes, fears, and prevailing ideology. The "Bolivarian socialist" regime of Hugo Chvez in Venezuela sees China as
a powerful ally in its crusade against Western "imperialism," while countries such as Peru, Chile, and Colombia view the PRC in more traditional terms as an important investor and trading partner within the context of global free market capitalism. The
core of Chinese soft power in Latin America, as in the rest of the world, is the widespread perception that the PRC, because of its sustained high rates of economic growth and technology development, will present tremendous business opportunities in the future, and will be a power to be reckoned with globally. In general, this perception can be divided into seven areas: hopes for future access to Chinese markets hopes for future Chinese investment influence of Chinese entities and infrastructure in Latin America hopes for the PRC to serve as a counterweight to the United States and Western institutions China as a development model affinity for Chinese culture and work ethic China as "the wave of the future." In each of these cases, the soft power of the PRC can be identified as operating through distinct sets of actors: the political leadership of countries, the business community, students and youth, and the general population.
Economic engagement pushes out China

Dowd 12
[Alan. Senior Analyst at the American Security Council. Countering China's Reach in Latin America 2012. http://www.ascfusa.org/content_pages/view/crisisinamericas +
Second, the U.S.
must stop taking the Western Hemisphere for granted, and instead must reengage in its own neighborhood economically, politically and militarily . That means no more allowing trade dealsand the partners counting on themto languish. Plans for a hemispheric free trade zone have faltered and foundered. The trade-expansion agreements with Panama and Colombia were left in limbo for years, before President Obama finally signed them into law in 2011. Reengagement means reviving U.S. diplomacy . The Wall Street Journal reports that due to political wrangling in
Washington, the State Department position focused on the Western Hemisphere has been staffed by an interim for nearly a year, while six Western Hemisphere ambassadorial posts (Uruguay, Venezuela, Ecuador, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Barbados) remain empty.
Reengagement means reversing plans to slash defense spending. The Joint Forces Command noted in 2008 that China has a deep respect for U.S. military power. We cannot overstate how important this has been to keeping the peace. But with the United States in the midst of massive military retrenchment, one wonders how long that reservoir of respect will last. Reengagement also means revitalizing security
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ties . A good model to follow might be whats happening in Chinas backyard. To deter China and prevent an accidental war, the U.S. is reviving its security partnerships all across the Asia-Pacific region. Perhaps its time to do the same in Latin America. We should remember that many Latin American countriesfrom Mexico and Panama to Colombia and Chileborder the Pacific. Given Beijings actions, it makes sense to bring these Latin American partners on the Pacific Rim into the alliance of alliances that is already stabilizing the Asia-Pacific region.
The plan crowds out Chinese influence market influence is key

Johnson 5
[Stephen. Senior Latin American Policy Analyst at Heritage. Balancing China's Growing Influence in Latin America 10/24/5 http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2005/10/balancingchinas-growing-influence-in-latin-america]
In the 1960s, the Soviet Union defied America's Monroe Doctrine by supporting Fidel Castro's mili-tary buildup in Cuba. Later, it supported insurgencies in Central America. This triggered a competition among existing right-wing dictatorships, Marxist authoritarianism, and the U.S. democratic model. In the end, democracy
and open markets won. Pro-moted by the United States, these principles have generally made Latin American states more viable politically, economically, and commercially. Today, another communist state-the People's Republic of China (PRC)-is seeking trade, diplo-matic, and military ties in Latin America and the Car-ibbean. The region is rich in natural resources and developing markets for manufactured goods and even arms. China does not currently pose a direct military threat in Latin America and has steadily embraced market concepts, but it represents serious competi-tion that could dilute U.S. influence. Washington could ignore this intrusion or attempt to contain it. Ignoring it leaves a vacuum for China to fill, while trying to contain it runs against America's own free market ideals. Instead, the United States can best look after its hemispheric interests and moderate China's presence by: Consolidating trade relations with Latin America relationships
assis-tance to U.S. neighbors, and and removing protectionist U.S. trade barriers,
Emphasizing comprehensive
unproductive
as opposed to narrow-interest diplomacy such as counternarcotics,
Minimizing
restrictions
on
Pressing harder for democratic and economic reforms, prioritizing support
for these pur-poses, and reenergizing public diplomacy.
More evidence US-China interests in Latin America are competitive and trade off
Johnson 5
*Stephen. Senior Latin American Policy Analyst at Heritage. Balancing China's Growing Influence in Latin America 10/24/5 http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2005/10/balancingchinas-growing-influence-in-latin-america]
The United States and China have competing inter-ests in Latin America . Washington would like to see its hemispheric neighbors develop into stable, demo-cratic, prosperous trade partners that embrace the rule of law. Beijing sees the region as a source of raw materials, a market for manufactured goods, and a platform for power projection. U.S. interests probably coincide more with Latin American needs. In con-trast, China represents an opportunity to temper American dominance with broader alliances. Regrettably, Chinese aid and commodity imports may buy time for state industries, powerful presi-dents, and influential oligarchs. Most of all, such commerce could delay needed reforms and indus-trialization that might lift Latin America's near majority underclass out of poverty. America's strength is competition, and it should influence the rules of the game in that direction. As a good neighbor and in its own and Latin America's interests, the United States should: Accelerate free trade agreements. Free trade agreements have been the hallmark of U.S. pol-icies toward the region since the 1990s. As an inducement, America should drop its agricul-tural and steel subsidies that dissuade potential partners and cost taxpayers money. Improved U.S. trade relations with Andean neighbors (and eventually Southern Cone countries) will open market access for both U.S. and Latin American enterprises and provide an outlet for industrial
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growth. Adopt more comprehensive relationships. Single-issue diplomacy that emphasizes U.S. interests, such as counternarcotics, leaves vacu-ums in other areas such as security assistance and trade capacity development that other powers
can fill. Plan Colombia is working because the United States is helping Colombia to combat terrorism, expand public safety zones, strengthen institutions, reactivate the economy, and promote rural peace.[11] Cut red tape on assistance. This policy should be followed to the greatest extent possible. Per-formance requirements are blunt instruments that do not cover every situation. Constraints such as annual certifications on counternarcot-ics cooperation and Article 98 letters that with-hold security assistance occasionally backfire by withdrawing support for allies in areas of mutual interest. If Congress considers such restrictions absolutely necessary, it should tai-lor them to suspend only economic aid that is not crucial to immediate U.S. interests. Press harder for reforms and use public diplomacy. Once Latin America had elected leaders and fledgling markets in the 1990s, U.S. support for democracy and economic reforms declined. Although each country is responsible for solving its own problems, exter-nal pressure can encourage progress. U.S. mostly reactive toward Latin America, should
pub-lic diplomacy, which is be strengthened and more supportive of U.S. development goals. The United States has become the greatest power in the world based on its tradition of free choice. Choice goes hand-in-hand with competition , because these keep markets vibrant and govern-ments accountable. In a globalized world, democ-racies have relations with whom they wish and nation-competitors such as China cannot be blocked from visiting the Western Hemisphere. However, the United States can best look after its regional interests by cultivating closer political and security ties with neighbors, advancing free trade, and encouraging respect for the rule of law and lib-eral economic principles among all players- including China.
The internal link is empirically true American inaction drives Chinese market expansion
Johnson 5
*Stephen. Senior Latin American Policy Analyst at Heritage. Balancing C hina's Growing Influence in Latin America 10/24/5 http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2005/10/balancingchinas-growing-influence-in-latin-america]
In the Western Hemisphere, the Chinese are taking advantage of failures of half-hearted mar-ket reforms and Washington's unwillingness to pursue neighborhood relations with much enthu-siasm. National Defense University professor Cyn-thia A. Watson notes, "[T]he 1990s turned into a period of severe disappointment as free markets led to rampant corruption and unfulfilled expec-tations in Latin America while Washington became the world's superpower rather than a part-ner for the region."[3]
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China Good: Energy Security 1st Line

Chinese influence in Latin Americas key to their energy security
Xiaoxia 5-6
*Wang. Staff Writer for the Economic Observer. In America's Backyard: China's Rising Influence In Latin America The Economic Observer, 5/6/13 http://worldcrunch.com/china-2.0/in-america-039-s-backyard-china-039-s-risinginfluence-in-latin-america/foreign-policy-trade-economy-investmentsenergy/c9s11647/ ]
Among the numerous needs of China, the
demand for oil has always been the most powerful driving force. In the past 30 years, China has consumed one-third of the world's new oil production and become the world's second-largest oil importer. More than half of China's oil demand depends on imports , which increases the instability of its energy security. Diversification is inevitable . In this context, Latin America and its huge reserves and production capacity naturally became a destination for China. China must better protect its energy supply, and can't just play the simple role of consumer. It must also help solidify the important links of the petroleum industry supply chain. Indeed, the China National Petroleum Corporation frequently appears in Latin American countries, and Chinas investment and trade in the Latin American countries are also focused on its energy sector. In the opinion of many European and American
scholars, China's current practice isnt much different from that of Western colonizers of the last century. These scholars b elieve that China doesnt care about local human rights or the state of democracy when dealing with countries. All China
is interested in is establishing long-term, stable economic relations. This realistic path is exactly opposite to that of America's newfound idealism. Thus China has become a close collaborator of certain Latin American countries, such as Venezuela, that are in sharp conflict with the United States. The global financial crisis of 2008 was a chance for China to become an increasingly important player in Latin American. As Europe and the United States were caught in a financial quagmire, China, with nearly $3 trillion of foreign exchange reserves as backing, embarked on "funds-for-assets" transactions with Latin American countries. So what does China want exactly in entering Latin American? Is it to obtain a stable supply of energy and resources, and thus inadvertently acquire political influence? Or the other way round? Presumably most U.S. foreign policy-makers are well aware of the answer. China's involvement in the Latin American continent doesnt constitute a threat to the United States, but brings benefits . It is precisely because China has reached "loans-for-oil" swap agreements with Venezuela, Brazil, Ecuador and other countries that it brings much-needed funds to these oil-producing countries in South America. Not only have these funds been used in the field of oil production, but they have also safeguarded the energy supply of the United States, as well as stabilized these countries' livelihood -- and to a certain extent reduced the impact of illegal immigration and the drug trade on the U.S.
Energy insecurity sparks Asian war

Clement 12
[Nicholas, China and India Vie for Energy Security, May 25, http://www.2point6billion.com/news/2012/05/25/china-and-india-vie-for-energysecurity-11177.html]
The competitive relationship between China and India has become a defining feature of the strategic environment across emerging Asia. While both nations are currently not in direct conflict, there are several areas of strategic interest which could potentially be clashing points in the future. Energy security is one such point; and
while escalation between China and India is unlikely, it is important to note that the energy policies of each nation are largely based on geopolitical considerations. First, it is important to recognize that energy cooperation between China and India over the past decade has been
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increasing. In January 2006, for example, both nations signed a memorandum of cooperation in the field of oil and natural gas which encouraged collaboration between their enterprises, including joint exploration and development of hydrocarbon resources. Escalations in global energy prices and political uncertainties in the Middle East, however, have resulted in both countries looking for long-term arrangements. As
China and India are increasingly forced to rely on the global oil market to meet their energy demands, they are more susceptible to supply disruptions and price fluctuations. In response, both countries have partly followed geopolitical energy policies, based on notions of traditional security. Ultimately, what we see is the arrival of military and political planning in trying to solve the issue of natural resource shortages. Energy security is of utmost strategic importance to China and India if they hope to continue to expand their economies. Rapid growth rates in both countries have grown in tandem with increased demand for energy. By 2020, it is estimated that
China and India combined will account for roughly one-third of the worlds GDP and, as such, will require vast amounts of energy to fuel their economies. As such, the
competition for energy resources such as oil and natural gas will only become fiercer. An important aspect of energy security is maritime control in the Asia-Pacific oceans. The sea lines of communication that run through Asia effectively act as the vital arteries for both countries. Maritime security is thus of major national interest for both China and India, and is directly linked to their energy security. Recent military modernization within China has been focused towards upgrading its naval capabilities, and ultimately moving towards creating a strong and powerful blue-water navy. Indias drive for maritime dominance has resulted in its naval budget increasing from US$1.3 billion in 2001 to US$3.5 billion in 2006, with plans to
further increase naval spending 40 percent by 2014. Chinas thirst for oil has doubled over the last decade, and is only pred icted to rise. Similarly, India relies on the energy shipped through maritime regions to fund its own industrialization. India
continues to state its maritime goals in pure geopolitical terms, even explicitly acknowledging in their 2004 Maritime Doctrine that control of the
choke points would be useful as a bargaining chip in the international power game, where the currency of military power remains a stark reality. Thus
it is clear that energy security has been directly translated into a national security issue, which has both political and military implications. The geopolitical rivalry in Myanmar between China and India provides
great insight into their adversarial energy relationship. In Myanmar, both Chinese and Indian geopolitical and geoeconomic interests collide, and as such, may become a point of contention between China and India. Myanmar holds vast strategic importance for both China and India due to its location and abundance of natural resources. It has vast reserves of natural gas, so for both China and India it is presented as a source of energy free from the geopolitical risks of the Middle East. There has thus been major competition between China and India for access to the market. India has signed a US$40 billion deal with Myanmar for the transfer of natural gas, and has also had frequent discussions about building a pipeline from Myanmar to India. However, China has increasingly gained the most from Myanmars available resources. In 2005, for example, Myanmar reneged on a deal with India, and instead signed a 30-year contract with China for the sale of 6.5 trillion cubic liters of natural gas. For China, Myanmar is also important as it provides a land route to the Indian Ocean that vital resources could be shipped through in place of the Strait of Malacca. The
potential for the Malacca Strait to be blockaded by a rival is of great concern to China, since as much as 85 percent of Chinas oil is shipped through the region. For India, Myanmar is also of a strategic importance due to its location. China is already on friendly terms with Pakistan and has been expanding its presence in the Indian Ocean, thus giving India a feeling of Chinese encirclement. Indias
interest in Myanmar directly relates to the growing presence and influence of China in the region. Chinas string of pearls strategy refers to attempts to negotiate basing rights along the sea route linking the Middle East with China, including creating strong diplomatic ties with important states in the region. Not only does this contain Indias naval projection of power, it also directly threatens Indias energy access and the regional balance of power. While military confrontation between China and India remains unlikely, it is important to recognize that China and Indias energy policies revolve around traditional ideas of security, which highlight military and political balancing. Their energy policies are largely based on geopolitical and security considerations, and not just with regards to the global oil market. As such, it
is critical for there to be ongoing diplomatic engagement between China and India to avoid unnecessary or accidental escalation. China-India war causes extinction
Kahn 9
*Jer. Why India fears China Newsweek, 10/19/9 lexis+

On June 21, two Chinese military helicopters swooped low over Demchok, a tiny Indian hamlet high in the Hima-layas along the northwestern border with China. The helicopters dropped canned food over a barren expanse and then returned to bases in China. India's military scrambled helicopters to the scene but did not seem unduly alarmed. This sort of Cold War cat-and-mouse game has played out on the 4,057-kilometer India-China border for decades. But the incident fed a media frenzy about "the Chinese dragon." Beginning
in August, stories about new Chinese incursions into India have dominated the 24-hour TV news networks and the newspaper headlines. China claims some 90,000 square kilometers of Indian territory . And most of those claims are tangled up
with Tibet. Large swaths of India's northern mountains were once part of Tibet. Other stretches belonged to semi-independent kingdoms that
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paid fealty to Lhasa. Because
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Beijing now claims Tibet as part of China, it has by extension sought to claim parts of India that it sees as historically Tibetan, a claim that has become increasingly flammable in
recent months. Ever since the anti-Chinese unrest in Tibet last year, progress toward settling the border dispute has stalled, and the situation has taken a dangerous turn. The emergence of videos showing Tibetans beating up Han Chinese shopkeepers in Lhasa and other Tibetan cities created immense domestic pressure on Beijing to crack down. The Communist Party leadership worries that agitation by Tibetans will only encourage unrest by the country's other ethnic minorities, such as Uighurs in Xinjiang or ethnic Mongolians in Inner Mongolia, threatening China's integrity as a nation. Susan Shirk, a former Clinton-administration official and expert on China, says that "in the past, Taiwan was the 'core issue of sovereignty,' as they call it, and Tibet was not very salient to the public." Now, says Shirk, Tibet is considered a "core issue of national sovereignty" on par with Taiwan. The implications for India's security--and the world's--are ominous. It
turns what was once
an obscure argument over lines on a 1914 map and some barren, rocky peaks hardly worth fighting over into a flash point that could spark a war between two nuclear-armed neighbors. And that makes the India-China border dispute into an issue of concern to far more than just the two parties involved. The United States and Europe as well as the rest of Asia ought to take notice--a conflict involving India and China could result in a nuclear exchange. And it could suck the West in--either as an ally in the defense of Asian democracy, as in the case of Taiwan, or as a mediator trying to separate the two sides.
South China Sea conflict also goes nuclear

Wesley 12
[Michael Wesley, Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and an Adjunct Professor at Griffith University and The University of Sydney, former Executive Director of the Lowy Institute for International Policy, former Professor of International Relations and Director of the Griffith Asia Institute at Griffith University, and Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the University of New South Wales, July 2012, Whats at stake in the South China Sea? http://lowyinstitute.cachefly.net/files/wesley_whats_at_stake_snapshot11.pdf]
The South China Sea is enclosed by the west coast of mainland Southeast Asia, Borneo and the Philippine archipelago. Rich in hydrocarbons and fish stocks, it is traversed by over one-third of global shipping. Its waters and seabed are subject to six opposing territorial claims by China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines but these confrontations are generally not regarded as seriously as the Taiwan Straits and the Korean peninsula standoffs. But the South China Sea is more unpredictable, and certainly warrants much closer and more sustained attention by strategists and policy-makers. It is in the South China Sea that the components of Asias changing power dynamics are most concentrated and on display: Chinas growing strategic heft and paranoid sense of entitlement; its Southeast Asian neighbours hopes and misgivings about Chinas regional dominance; and the United States compulsion to meet Chinas strategic challenge. The South China Sea is a tangle of competing and mutually complicating claims over territory, resources and navigation rights . Geopolitically, it is like the
Bermuda triangle, reversing expected alignments and suspending normal rules of the game. It pits Asias two most significant Communist countries, China and Vietnam, against each other, unites usually bitter enemies China and Taiwan, and is drawing the United States back to a partnership with Vietnam a generation after the fall of Saigon. The
South China Sea is the flashpoint in the Pacific where conflict is most likely to break out through miscalculation . It is a crowded maritime environment contested by some inexperienced maritime forces with underdeveloped naval doctrine, among whom there are no established and accepted rules for managing maritime incidents. And the combination of the claimant states power asymmetries, overlapping prerogatives, and growing nationalism mean that incidents, once they occur, are likely to escalate. There are four reasons why finding solutions to the South China Sea disputes should be given the highest priority by strategic policy-makers. 1. For China its about security and respect The South China Sea symbolises Beijings larger maritime dilemma. The countrys major population and productive centres cluster
along Chinas coastline, and are therefore vulnerable to major attack from the sea. Naval strategists see China as hemmed in along its sea coast by a chain of states or territories hostile to Beijing: Japan, Korea, the Ryuku Islands, Taiwan, and the Philippines. The
overriding goal of Chinese naval strategy is to establish dominance over the waters within this first island chain . At the southern end of the first island chain, the South China Sea is crucial to Chinas commercial shipping, energy flows, and
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the access of its Hainan island-based submarines to the Pacific. But the
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South China Seas southern and western access points the Sunda, Lombok, Luzon and Malacca Straits are controlled by allies or partners of the United States. The best way to offset this vulnerability is to control the South China Sea itself and thereby loosen the American position in Southeast Asia. Influential elites in China view the South China Sea as blue territory that is, as much
a part of Chinas sovereign territory as Tibet, Xinjiang or Taiwan. To this line of thinking, any surrender of its claims in the South China Sea would signal a weakening of its rights to Tibet, Xinjiang or Taiwan and is therefore unthinkable. Chinas 1992 Territorial Law classified the South China Sea as Chinas internal waters, meaning foreign naval vessels and aircraft must first gain Beijings permission before transiting, submarines must surface, and that China retains the right to evict other countries shipping at any time. Beijings willingness to enforce this law has been growing apace with its naval power in the western Pacific. In recent weeks, Beijing has placed the Spratly and Paracel Islands and the Macclesfield Bank under prefectural-level administration, established a 45-member legislature to administer the 1100 people who live on the islands, and approved the deployment of a Peoples Liberation Army garrison to the islands. 2. Southeast Asia avoiding the bad old days If
unaddressed, the dynamics in the South China Sea could return Southeast Asia to the bad old days of inter-state divisions , domestic instability and competitive great-power interventions . On no other issue have the disagreements and rivalries between ASEAN member states been so sustained and
obvious. The Philippines and Vietnam demand that the organisation supports them in standing up to Beijing. On the other side are Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar, with no direct stake in the conflict and which refuse to endorse the Philippines and Vietnams confrontational stance. Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore are concerned about the dispute, but believe that avoiding confrontation with China will improve the prospects for productive negotiations. The
stand-off over the South China Sea exposes the hollowness of Asian institutions reliance on the principle of unanimity which means that any members objection can keep an issue, no matter how
pressing, off the agenda. Beijings refusal to discuss the South China Sea in any regional meeting, and its implicit threat to withdraw from any organisation that doesnt respect this wish, shows Southeast Asias confidence that it could socialise China by welcoming it into regional institutions was misplaced. Asian institutions allow Beijing to make apparent concessions, such as its 2002 agreement with ASEAN to a Declaration of Conduct on the South China Sea, without actually surrendering any part of its position. As China and the United States increase the stakes in the South China Sea, ASEANs cardinal principle of neutrality is threatened. The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia are tightening their strategic relationships with the United States, just as Cambodia, Laos and Thailand deepen their links to China. And there are signs that the disputes have become entangled in domestic politics in the Philippines and Vietnam, making their stances even more uncompromising. In Manila, following allegations that Beijing used corrupt payments to soften the former Arroyo administrations stance on the South China Sea, the current Aquino administration and its Parliamentary opposition are vying for the most uncompromising policies on the issue. To counter rumours circulating around Hanoi that Beijing has bought the Vietnam s senior leadership, the Vietnamese government has passed a law claiming sovereignty over the Spratly and Paracel Islands. 3. For the United States its about Credibility within limits It is in the South China Sea that Southeast Asias anxieties about China overlap with American anxieties about Beijings naval buildup. Over the past two years, the United States has taken an active interest and position in what had formerly been a dispute between China and the other claimants. This means there are now in effect two layers to this dispute: a basic stand-off between the territorial claimants; and an overarching strategic contest between Beijing and Washington. For
the United States, whats at stake in the South China Sea is the viability of its entire presence in the western Pacific. The US Navys access to the South China Sea is contested by Beijing. China claims it will respect the freedom of passage of ships and aircraft through
the area, on the condition that they are en route to another destination, and do not conduct military exercises or collect intelligence or militarily useful data. Washington
is adamant that the South China Seas sea lanes are international waters, and are therefore subject to freedom of navigation, which in international law allows the conduct of military exercises and the collection of intelligence and militarily useful data. If Washington surrenders its ability to navigate the South China Sea on its own terms, it will lose a major foothold in the western Pacific . The South China Sea in effect pits a
Chinese expansive claim (sovereignty based on historical usage) against an American expansive claim, that freedom of navigation allows the collection of intelligence and military data. The American claim is contested in other waters by Malaysia, Indonesia and India, though supported by other regional countries. China accuses the US of hyping the freedom of navigation question, arguing that it hides an int ention to use the issue to build a coalition against China. For the Southeast Asian states contesting Chinas South China Sea claims, the United States presence and interest in the issue is a prerequisite for their position. Washington is acutely aware that it needs
to be seen as a reliable ally and partner in the Pacific. It realises that its arms-length response to the Asian Financial Crisis eroded its position in Asia and set
China on its path towards building soft power in the region. For Southeast Asians worried that Washingtons attention or will to stay in the region may erode, there is virtue in keeping the South China Sea on the agenda. But Washington
cant give its allies and partners a blank cheque which allows them to confront, and even provoke, China from the comfort of the assumption that the United States will back them up. And some in Southeast Asia are watching Washingtons moves very closely, sensitive that any concession could signal its acceptance of Chinas claims in the South China Sea. 4. Solutions are Part of the Problem Either multilateral mediation or international law is most often used to resolve disputes of this sort but in the South China Sea they act to exacerbate the situation. Beijing refuses to discuss the dispute in any multilateral context, fearing that it will facilitate the formation of a front against
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China. The
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with Manila particularly insistent that ASEAN must negotiate a common position before negotiating with China. The
Southeast Asian claimants, however, are adamant that they must deal with China as a coalition, result is a stand-
off: the Philippines insists that ASEAN must find a common position before negotiating with China, while China will only negotiate if ASEAN abandons the search for a common position. International law also intensifies the dispute. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea does not recognise Chinas historical claims, and therefore cannot serve as the basis for an adjudication of the dispute. Worse, because international law relies on unbroken longevity of claims as the basis for adjudication, none of the parties to the South China Sea dispute can allow others claims to pass uncontested, in case this is taken as evidence of its relinquishing of its claim. The result is a steady drum beat of hydrocarbon prospecting, fishing, the occupation of islets, and maritime clashes. Policy Implications There is a great deal at stake in the South China Sea. The dynamics of this issue will impact on Chinas evolving international
personality, the response of its neighbours to its rising power, and the longevity of the United States position in the western Pacific. With the growth of trade and investment around Asias IndoPacific coast, the South China Sea will become ever more crowded with shipping and commerce.
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Ext. China Energy Security

More ev
Dowd 12
*Alan. Senior Analyst at the American Security Council. Countering China's Reach in Latin America 2012. http://www.ascfusa.org/content_pages/view/crisisinamericas +
Eyeing energy resources to keep its economy humming, China is engaged in a flurry of investing and spending in Latin America. In Costa Rica, China is funding a $1.24-billion upgrade of the countrys oil refinery; bankrolling an $83-million soccer stadium; backing infrastructure and telecommunications improvements; and pouring millions into a new police academy. In Colombia, China is planning a massive dry canal to link the countrys Pacific and Atlantic coasts by rail. At either terminus, there will be Chinese ports; in between, there will be Chinese assembly facilities, logistics operations and distribution plants; and on the Pacific side, there will be dedicated berths to ship Colombian coal outbound to China. In mid-January, a
Chinese-built oil rig arrived in Cuba to begin drilling in Cubas swath of the Gulf of Mexico. Reuters reports that Spanish, Russian, Malaysian and Norwegian firms will use the rig to extract Cuban oil. For now, China
is focusing on onshore oil extraction in Cuba. New offshore discoveries will soon catapult Brazil into a top-five global oil producer. With some 38 billion barrels of recoverable oil off its coast, Brazil expects to pump 4.9 million barrels per day by 2020, as the Washington Times reports, and China has used generous loans to position itself as the prime beneficiary of Brazilian oil. Chinas state-run oil and banking giants have inked technology-transfer, chemical, energy and real-estate deals with Brazil. Plus,
as the Times details, China came to the rescue of Brazils main oil company when it sought financing for its massive drilling plans, pouring $10 billion into the project. A study in Joint Force Quarterly (JFQ) adds that Beijing
plunked down $3.1 billion for a slice of
Brazils vast offshore oil fields.
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China Good: China Hegemony 1st Line

Influence in LA is key to counter US leadership
Dowd 12
[Alan. Senior Analyst at the American Security Council. Countering China's Reach in Latin America 2012. http://www.ascfusa.org/content_pages/view/crisisinamericas +
The JFQ study adds that China
has an important and growing presence in the regions military institutions . Most Latin American nations, including Mexico, send officers to professional military education courses in the PRC. In Ecuador, Venezuela and Bolivia, Beijing has begun to sell sophisticated hardwaresuch as radars and K-8 and MA-60 aircraft. The JFQ report concludes, ominously, that Chinese defense firms are likely to leverage their experience and a growing track record for their goods to expand their market share in the region, with the secondary consequence being that those purchasers will become more reliant on the associated Chinese logistics, maintenance, and training infrastructures that support those products. Put it all together, and the southern flank of the United States is exposed to a range of new security challenges. To be sure, much of this is a function of Chinas desire to secure oil markets. But theres more at work here than Chinas thirst for oil. Like a global chess match, China is probing Latin America and sending a message that just as Washington has trade and military ties in Chinas neighborhood, China is developing trade and military ties in Americas neighborhood.
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Ext. China Hegemony

Chinese softpowers a vital counterweight to US leadership
Ellis 11
China's historical status as a "leader of the developing world" positions it as the natural ally of the new generation of Latin American populist leaders, such as Hugo Chvez, Rafael Correa, and Evo Morales. During his first
trip to Beijing after being elected president, for example, Morales proclaimed himself to be a "great admirer of Mao," while Chvez has exclaimed that Mao and South American revolutionary icon Simn Bolvar would have been "great friends." While
these leaders may primarily be seeking Chinese investments and commodity purchases , the position of the PRC as a geopolitical "alternative" to the United States shapes the way that they court the Chinese . In permitting such hopes, the PRC has, to date, been careful not to associate itself directly with the anti-U.S. activities or rhetoric of these regimes, so as not to damage its strategically important relationship with the United States and the West. Nonetheless, the relationship cannot avoid some flavor of the relationships between the Soviet Union and its Latin American client states during the Cold War. Bolivia turned to China to purchase K8 combat aircraft, for example, after the United States blocked its ability to procure aircraft from the Czech Republic.11
More ev
Ellis 11
The rise of China is intimately tied to the global economy through trade, financial, and information flows, each of which is highly dependent on global institutions and cooperation. Because of this, some within the PRC leadership see the country's sustained growth and development, and thus the stability of the regime, threatened if an actor such as the United States is able to limit that cooperation or block global institutions from supporting Chinese interests. In Latin America, China's attainment of observer status in the OAS in 2004 and its
acceptance into the IADB in 2009 were efforts to obtain a seat at the table in key regional institutions, and to keep them from being used "against" Chinese interests. In addition, the
PRC has leveraged hopes of access to Chinese markets by Chile, Peru, and Costa Rica to secure bilateral free trade agreements, whose practical effect is to move Latin America away from a U.S.-dominated trading block (the Free Trade Area of the Americas) in which the PRC would have been disadvantaged. Finally, the PRC benefits from the challenges posed to the dominance of the United States in the region by regimes such as Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia, and its trade and investment with those regimes help to keep them economically viable. Nonetheless, as mentioned above, the PRC is careful to
avoid association with the anti-U.S. rhetoric and projects of those regimes, which could damage its more strategically important relationship with the United States.
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China Good: Taiwan 1st Line

Chinese influence in Latin America quells tensions over Taiwan
Ellis 11
[R. Evan. Assistant Professor of National Security Studies in the Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies at the National Defense University. Chinese Soft Powe r in Latin America: A Case Study Joint Force Quarterly, Vol 60. 2011. http://www.ndu.edu/press/chinese-soft-power-latin-america.html]
Diplomatic Recognition of Taiwan. For the PRC, the government of Taiwan
represents an important issue of political legitimacy and internal security. Currently, 12 of the 23 nations in the world that diplomatically recognize the government of Taiwan are found in Latin America and the Caribbean. Although the People's Republic of China does not publicly threaten to block investment in or loans to countries that do not recognize the PRC, China repeatedly emphasizes the issue in its public diplomacy in the region, and makes such investments and market access difficult for those countries that do not recognize it, while simultaneously nurturing expectations regarding the opportunities that diplomatically recognizing the PRC could bring. When Costa Rica changed its diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to the PRC in May 2007, for example, it received an aid package that included an $83 million soccer stadium, the purchase of $300 million in government bonds, various highway, public works, and aid projects, and a $1 billion joint venture to expand the country's petroleum refinery, as well as PRC aid in facilitating access to Chinese markets by traditional Costa Rican products such as coffee. In part, such Chinese generosity was directed toward the other countries in the region that still recognized Taiwan in order to demonstrate the types of benefits that could be made available if they too were to change their diplomatic posture.13 Although the PRC and Taiwan have informally agreed to refrain from the use of economic incentives to competitively "bid" for diplomatic recognition, since Costa Rica's switch, the allure of the PRC has prompted declarations of interest in changing diplomatic posture by Panamanian president Richard
Martenelli, Paraguayan president Fernando Lugo, and Salvadoran president Maricio Fuenesalthough all did so prior to assuming office.
War in Taiwan draws in the US and causes extinction

Hunkovic 9
*Lee. Prof Military Studies @ American Military University. The Chinese -Taiwanese Conflict Possible Futures of a Confrontation between China, Taiwan, and the United States of America www.lampmethod.com, 2009]
A war between China, Taiwan and the United States has the potential to escalate into a nuclear conflict and a third world war, therefore, many countries other than the primary actors could be affected by such a conflict, including Japan, both Koreas, Russia, Australia, India and Great Britain, if they were drawn into the war, as well as all other countries in the world that participate in the global economy, in which the United States and China are the two most dominant members. If China were able to successfully annex Taiwan, the possibility exists that they could then plan to attack Japan and begin a policy of aggressive expansionism in East and Southeast Asia, as well as the Pacific and even into India, which could in turn create an international standoff and deployment of military forces to contain the threat. In any case, if China and the United States engage in a full-scale conflict, there are few countries in the world that will not be economically and/or militarily affected by it. However, China, Taiwan and United States are the primary actors in this scenario, whose
actions will determine its eventual outcome, therefore, other countries will not be considered in this study.
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Ext. Taiwan / Asian Stability

More evidence Chinese influence is key to effective Asian regionalism locks in stability
Zheng 9
*Denise. Program Coordinator for CSIS Public Policy. Chinas Use of Softpower in the Developing World 2009 http://csis.org/files/media/csis/pubs/090305_mcgiffert_chinesesoftpower_web.pdf ]
China realizes the primacy of establishing good relations with its periphery for regional economic and security stability. It aims to acquire soft power by resolving border disputes, which in some cases have involved Chinese territorial concessions. China actively participates in or has assumed leadership roles in the creation of regional organizations for economic and security cooperation, including the East Asian Summit, the Asian Development Bank, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and ASEAN. It has contracted numerous
large-scale infrastructure projects to build roads, bridges, pipelines, and power-generating facilities, particularly in Southeast Asia and Central Asian countries formerly part of the Soviet Union. Especially
in Southeast Asia, China wields power in the region through its skillful diplomacy, the region s admiration of China as a model for development, and by emphasizing shared Asian values. Southeast Asia is arguably the region where China's soft power is strongest. The assistance that China offered in the aftermath of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, when the United States was missing in action, has played a significant role in the transformation of the region's attitude toward China. The depth of China's trade, investment, and aid relationships with countries on its periphery grants China significant influence in Asia.
Chinese soft power is key to Asian stability

Wiggin 10
*Stu. Staffer for China Radio Intl. American Dream now a Chinese Reality 8/10/10 Xinhua]
As part of the commentary which focuses upon the general relationship between the developed and developing world, more often than not a clear delineation is drawn between the way of life pursued by the people in the Eastern hemisphere and that of the developed Western world, while Africa is generally left out altogether. Although it is necessary to acknowledge differences during any analysis of East and West, the
reality is that the most powerful country in the 'new' Eastern/Asian bloc, i.e. China, has inherited many of the characteristics that made America into the power it is today. The number of similarities between the two societies is astounding. China is not only on the verge of becoming an equal partner within the world balance of power over the next 50 years; it is also set to take America's place as a beacon for prosperity and opportunity . The United States of America, as we
know it today, came to being as a result of the culmination of the 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Second World War. These two events allowed America to emerge as the worlds strongest power and accelerated the decline of former colonial powers Britain, France and Germany. At this time, Asia was not even part of the equation. Today, however, it is possible to see a very similar situation. This time it is China that
remains well afloat within a sea of global recession and Middle Eastern skirmishes. The fact that China holds
huge dollar-denominated assets as part of their foreign exchange reserves reaffirms Americas remaining importance within the global financial system, but it
is generally accepted by all that China will eventually balance America in terms of both hard and soft power. The soft power that China cultivates often exists within the developing world and is often seen as a rallying bloc contrasted against the self-seeking interests of developed nations. Building
soft power was a priority for America post 1949 as it is for China going into the 21st Century. China is going through the same stages of formation, albeit at an accelerated pace, that the United States went through from the 1920s onwards. Disregarding the question of history (i.e. that China boasts a 5000 year history which nobody below the age of 50 is willing to study in-depth, and America only possesses around 200 years of modern history, most of which they would rather forget to a large extent), the similarities are quite clear to see. Not unlike America, China has become home to many people from outside of its borders. Many people have set up a home here in hope of pursuing what is fast becoming the Chinese dream: making their fortune. In Guangzhou, a 10-square-kilometer area centered around Hongqiao, affectionately referred to by locals as Chocolate City, serves as home to a mix of Chinese and foreign dwellers, the majority of which are of African descent. According to Guangzhou Daily, the total number of Africans in this city alone is thought to be almost 100,000, and is only set to rise further. This influx is, at this moment in time, a novel feature of certain cities for many Chinese people, but so too was the influx of immigrants to America in
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the 1920s. What is more, it is not only immigrants expecting to find fortune in China. As Lester R. Brown, President of Earth Policy Institute in Washington has stated, "for China's 1.3 billion people, the American dream is fast becoming the Chinese dreamMillions of Chinese are living like Americans: eating more meat, driving cars, traveling abroad, and otherwise spending their fast-rising incomes much as Americans do." In this sense, China bears a greater resemblance to the America of the 1920s and 30s than modern America does today. Aside from demographic or financial similarities between China and the United States, one must also acknowledge the general similarity between the psyche of the American and Chinese peoples. Both peoples are generally insular, largely unconcerned with foreign affairs, and their grasp of geography outside of their respective continents is rather poor. Forays into foreign countries are usually the result of humanitarian efforts or as part of their search for natural resources, glaring examples being Chinas involvement in Africa and Americas obvious involvement in Iraq. There is no working class sentiment in China or America, and both countries are fiercely patriotic. Patriotism seems to have filled the void of any class sentimentality and it is for this reason that the hope of one People's Daily writer of restructuring Chinese growth in the context of globalization, as stated in the recent article "Why can't China climb up the value chain?," will always be constrained so long as unions are non-existent and labor remains cheap. Though the creation of a "Chinese Dream" may seem like an achievement for the country, there is also the idea that the American Dream could become a Chinese nightmare (USA Today, June 2005), with the possibility that consumption could outstrip global output. And even though the above paragraphs detail the likenesses that exist between the two countries, vast differences remain, mostly in political terms. It is no secret that the two countries have endured a tumultuous relationship, which has most recently been seen when the United States came to China with its tail between its legs regarding a global economic bailout. China, meanwhile,
is the arbiter of East Asian stability and is often a thorn in America's side in their pursuit of Western-led initiatives. Hilary Clinton said that global issues could not be solved by the United States or China alone, but without participation of the two countries, no problems would likely be solved. As it turns out, when they do work together nothing gets done, hence the stalemate with the South Korean Yellow Sea missile, a result of a strategic alliance between China and North Korea.
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China Good: Internal War 1st Line

Alternative to robust Chinese influence is internal conflict
Mead 9
[Walter Russell Mead, Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, Only Makes You Stronger, The New Republ ic, 2/4/9, http://www.tnr.com/story_print.html?id=571cbbb9-2887-4d81-8542-92e83915f5f8]
The greatest danger
both to
U.S.-China relations and to American power itself is probably not that plunge China into a major economic downturn . The or even tens
China will rise too far, too fast; it is that the current crisis might end China's growth miracle. In the worstcase scenario, the turmoil in the international economy will
Chinese financial system will implode
as loans to both state and private enterprises go bad. Millions
of millions of Chinese will be unemployed in a country without an effective social safety net . The collapse of asset bubbles in the stock and property markets will wipe out the savings of a generation of the Chinese middle class. The political consequences could include dangerous unrest --and a bitter climate of anti-foreign feeling that blames others for China's woes. ( Think of Weimar Germany , when both Nazi
and communist politicians blamed the West for Germany's economic travails.) Worse,
instability could lead to a vicious
cycle , as nervous investors moved their money out of the country, further slowing growth and, in turn, fomenting ever-greater bitterness . Thanks to a generation of rapid economic growth, China has so far been able to manage the stresses and conflicts of modernization and change; nobody knows what will happen if the growth stops.
That goes nuclear

Yee & Storey 2
[Herbert Yee, Professor of Politics and International Relations at the Hong Kong Baptist University and Ian Storey, Lecturer in Defence Studies at Deakin University, The China Threat: Perceptions, Myths and Reality. 2002, Pg 5]
The fourth factor contributing to the
perception of a China threat is the fear of political and economic collapse in the PRC, resulting in territorial fragmentation, civil war and waves of refugees pouring into neighbouring countries. Naturally, any or all of these scenarios would have a profoundly negative impact on regional stability. Today the Chinese leadership faces a raft of internal problems, including the increasing political demands of its citizens,
a growing population, a shortage of natural resources and a deterioration in the natural environment caused by rapid industrialisation and pollution. These problems
are putting a strain on the central government's ability to govern effectively. Political disintegration or a Chinese civil war might result in millions of Chinese refugees seeking asylum in neighbouring countries. Such an unprecedented exodus of refugees from a collapsed PRC would no doubt put a severe strain on the limited resources of China's neighbours. A fragmented China could also result in another nightmare scenario - nuclear weapons falling into the hands of irresponsible local provincial leaders or warlords.2 From this perspective, a disintegrating China would also pose a threat to its neighbours and the world.
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Ext. Growth Solves CCP Stability

Alternative to Chinese growths internal war
Kane and Serewicz 1
[Thomas. Security Studies from Hull. And Lawrence Foreign Policy Analyst China's Hunger: The Consequences of a Rising Demand for Food and Energ y Parameters, Fall 2001 Ebsco]
Despite China's problems with its food supply, the
Chinese do not appear to be in danger of widespread starvation. Nevertheless, one cannot rule out the prospect entirely, especially if the earth's climate actually is getting warmer. The consequences of general famine in a country with over a billion people clearly would be catastrophic. The effects of oil shortages and industrial stagnation would be less lurid, but economic collapse would endanger China's political stability whether
that collapse came with a bang or a whimper. PRC society has become dangerously fractured. As the coastal cities grow richer and more cosmopolitan while the rural inland provinces grow poorer, the political interests of the two regions become ever less compatible. Increasing the prospects for division yet further, Deng Xiaoping's administrative reforms have strengthened regional potentates at the expense of central authority. As Kent Calder observes, In part, this change [erosion of power at the center] is a conscious devolution, initiated by Deng Xiaoping in 1991 to outflank conservative opponents of economic reforms in Beijing nomenclature. But devolution has fed on itself, spurred by the natural desire of local authorities in the affluent and increasingly powerful coastal provinces to appropriate more and more of the fruits of growth to themselves alone.[ 49] Other social and economic developments deepen the rifts in Chinese society. The one-child policy, for instance, is disrupting traditional family life, with unknowable consequences for Chinese mores and social cohesion.[ 50] As families resort to abortion or infanticide to ensure that their one child is a son, the population may come to include an unprecedented preponderance of young, single men. If common gender prejudices have any basis in fact, these males are unlikely to be a source of social stability. Under these circumstances, China is vulnerable to unrest of many kinds. Unemployment or severe hardship, not to mention actual
starvation, could easily trigger popular uprisings. Provincial leaders might be tempted to secede, perhaps openly or perhaps by quietly ceasing to obey Beijing's directives. China's leaders, in turn, might adopt drastic measures to forestall such developments . If
faced with internal strife, supporters of China's existing regime may return to a more overt form of communist dictatorship. The PRC has, after all, oscillated between experimentation and orthodoxy continually throughout its existence. Spectacular examples include Mao's Hundred Flowers campaign and the return to conventional Marxism-Leninism after the leftist experiments of the Cultural Revolution, but the process continued throughout the 1980s, when the Chinese referred to it as the "fang-shou cycle." (Fang means to loosen one's grip; shou means to tighten it.)[ 51] If order broke down, the Chinese would not be the only people to suffer. Civil
unrest in the PRC would disrupt trade relationships, send refugees flowing across borders, and force outside powers to consider intervention. If different countries chose to intervene on different sides, China's struggle could lead to major war. In a less apocalyptic but still grim scenario, China's government might try to ward off its demise by attacking adjacent countries.
Economic contractions de-stabilize the CCP growth is key to their legitimacy

Abebe et al 10
[Dan Prof Law @ U of C Law. International Agreements, Internal Heterogeneity, and Climate Change: The Two Chinas Problem The Virginia Journal of Intl Law, Vol 50. Winter 2010 ln]
First, since
the collapse of the Marxist-Leninist ideology that served as the basis for the party's authority, the CCP has adopted economic growth as the central justification for its one-party rule. The CCP has pegged its political future to a type of "performance legitimacy" n12 - it governs because it can provide faster growth and
higher standards of living than any alternative form of central authority. In Eastern China, the CCP's approach has been a nearly unqualified success. Special coastal economic zones, favorable banking policies, and massive decentralization of government have combined to spur blistering economic growth. Western
China, however, has been left starkly behind: per capita gross domestic product (GDP) in Western China is less than half of what it is in Eastern China. The result has been rising income inequality, social instability, and
dramatic divisions between East and West, rural and city, and peasants and urban residents, along with the creation of a roaming underclass of Western Chinese seeking work in the coastal cities. n13 Worse still, these social schisms
coincide with ethnic and religious fault lines: Western China is home to many ethnic minority groups that harbor substantial animosity toward CCP rule. Poorer conditions in the West have created the political environment for the
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emergence of separatist movements. Brisk economic growth in Western China has thus become a political imperative for the CCP, and the CCP has [*330] prioritized it accordingly. China is likely to balk at any international agreement that might imperil this growth. Second, as a result of its growth-driven delegation of power, the CCP suffers from a surprising (for such a centralized government) erosion of state capacity: the provinces often ignore the central government's directives, frequently without meaningful consequences. n14 The
political structure of the CCP and the institutional structure of China's government are sometimes overlapping or redundant and, in many places, lack effective vertical or horizontal accountability. The environmental regulatory agencies are often subordinate to the very agencies they are intended to regulate. Province-level CCP officials are often evaluated (both locally and in Beijing) by their ability to produce high levels of economic growth, not their commitment to environmental protection. Although the CCP has recently tried to recentralize power and rationalize the governance structure, n15 the center's capacity to enforce environmental regulations on the provinces is much weaker than in a typical industrialized state. The existing structural relationship between the provinces and Beijing often results in a chronic inability on the part of the CCP to provide public goods like environmental protection, an inability it will not be able to reverse without incurring substantial costs. Finally, there is reason to believe that the vast majority of economic and scientific projections have substantially underestimated China's future carbon emissions by failing to account for heterogeneity among provinces. Eastern China is already highly industrialized and reasonably wealthy; there is every reason to expect that it will begin to move towards cleaner technologies and shift economic production away from industry and towards services (which are generally less energy and carbon-intensive). n16 Western China, by contrast, is poorer and more agrarian, and the typical development pattern for such an area involves a shift towards greater industrialization and higher per capita energy consumption (and carbon production). Indeed, this is precisely the direction in which Western China is moving. n17 Every quantitative forecast of Chinese emissions - save for two important exceptions - uses only national-level data, a methodological weakness that can wash out distinctions between East and West. Of the [*331] two studies that employ sub-national data, one projects higher emissions than any of the national-level studies; the other projects much higher emissions than any other study. n18 We read this as suggesting that Chinese carbon emissions over the forthcoming several decades may be significantly greater than the standard models have anticipated, with correspondingly higher costs to China from any agreement to curb carbon emissions. In light of the importance of economic growth to the CCP, the internal structure of Chinese governance, and the need to develop Western China, the prospects for China choosing to join such an agreement in the immediate future seem slim. This Article proceeds in four parts. Part I focuses on the general importance of economic growth to the CCP, the distribution of growth within China, and the social and economic difficulties generated by the CCP's hyper-growth policies. Part II analyzes the CCP's internal environmental enforcement capacity and argues that China would encounter substantial domestic challenges in implementing a climate accord, even if it chooses to sign one. Part III critiques the assumptions underlying quantitative forecasts of Chinese carbon emissions and suggests that future emissions may exceed conventional projections by substantial margins. Part IV canvasses extant potential frameworks for an international climate change agreement and argues that they are likely to be unsuitable to one or more of the relevant parties. Our conclusion is a pessimistic one: it will be difficult to convince China to join a meaningful international climate agreement in the near future under the best of circumstances. The Two Chinas, coupled with China's internal political dynamics, present circumstances that are hardly ideal. I. The Chinese Growth Imperative Modern China
has reinvented itself on a foundation of kudzu-like economic growth. Where Marxism once served as the unifying national ideology, the CCP has substituted wealth generation and prosperity as the touchstones of the regime and suggested that the Chinese people judge the legitimacy of CCP rule by the increases in their own standards of living. Economic growth in China has been
spectacular, but it has also been highly uneven. Eastern, coastal provinces have become wealthy, while central and western provinces have lagged far behind. In effect, there is no longer simply "China." There is now Eastern China, which is urban, industrialized, and relatively prosperous, and Western China, [*332] which is rural, agrarian, and relatively poor. This divergence in economic outcomes - a divergence that in places coincides with pre-existing ethnic and religious fault lines - poses a serious threat to social stability within China. n19 In response, the CCP has begun an aptly named "Western Development Program" in an attempt to prioritize economic growth, encourage national integration, and curb nationalist unrest in Western provinces. Accordingly, the governing regime will be reluctant to join a climate agreement that might contribute to greater instability by stunting crucial economic development in Western China. A. Foundations of CCP Rule: Economic Growth Since 1949, China has been governed by the autocratic CCP, dominated by Chairman Mao's conception of Marxism and designed to bring "socialist glory" to China while preserving party rule. After the Cultural Revolution and Mao's death in 1976, however, the CCP, led by Deng Xiaoping, began to move away from the Marxist ideological foundation that served as the legitimating discursive force for CCP authority. n20 Concerned with increasing levels of apathy toward communism and questions about its efficacy as the governing regime, n21 the CCP turned to two new sources of authority and legitimacy to galvanize support among the populace and strengthen its hold on power. The first of these was a new Chinese nationalism. The second was an emphasis on continued economic growth - a type of "performance legitimacy" n22 - as a benchmark and measure of the regime's success. From the late 1970s until the suppression of student-led democratic protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989, Deng and the CCP moved slowly toward a reform of China's centralized economic policies and internal governance structure. Deng and some of the reformers began to argue that the Chinese people wanted a higher standard of living, technological dynamism, and economic efficiency, not more ideology and excessive bureaucracy. To be economically successful, they argued, China needed the CCP's oneparty rule to ensure stability and regain international prestige. In the words of one scholar, "in the most fundamental sense ... China's economic reform strategy has been guided by a strategic [*333] vision at the top of the political system. This vision links China's security, global influence, and domestic stability to the state of its economy." n23 Sustained
economic growth is paramount for the continuation of the CCP, the maintenance of China's territorial integrity, and the pursuit of China's national interests in international
politics. n24 The CCP's reform strategy has been marked by incremental opening of the domestic economy, beginning with agriculture in the late 1970s and continuing through China's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. n25 During the 1980s, the CCP delegated a significant amount of authority from the central government to the provinces and cities, freeing local actors - province and city-level officials to develop policies that encouraged economic growth independent of the center. n26 After a temporary delay in reforms after Tiananmen Square, the 1990s saw the CCP commit to the creation of a market system, the privatization of some state-owned enterprises, and the
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development of the private sector. At the turn of the century, the CCP began to embrace private entrepreneurs and "retreat from economic administration to economic regulation as the core economic function of government." n27 From a national perspective, the CCP's economic reforms are an unqualified success. Fueled by these reforms, the Chinese economy has produced tremendous economic growth and a rapidly improving standard of living for many of China's citizens (in addition to severe consequences for the environment). Between 1978 and 2000, "overall per capita gross domestic product (GDP) in constant yuan roughly quadrupled." n28 Today, China has the world's second largest economy by purchasing power parity, surpassing Japan, India, and Germany. n29 It has the world's largest foreign capital reserves. n30 It enjoys a trade surplus of [*334] $ 163.3 billion with the United States. n31 It is a leading destination for foreign direct investment, n32 and has become more integrated into the world economy through its membership in the WTO. By almost every economic measure, the CCP's economic policies and drive for modernization have produced tremendous aggregate gains for China and its citizens. The CCP's policies have also created a consumer society in the formerly Marxist China. From telephones to televisions, newspapers to the internet, and automobiles to overseas travel, the CCP has brought to the Chinese people access to information, goods, and technology that were unimaginable during the Maoist era. n33 The
CCP's economic policies have reduced the role of the state in the affairs of daily life, leaving ordinary citizens more free to engage in social and economic activities. In so doing, the CCP has reinforced the norm that prioritizing hyper-growth polices and ensuring economic development are the party's overriding responsibilities. China is hardly unique in favoring continued economic growth; there are few nations on earth that are not attempting to grow their economies and produce wealth for their citizens. In China, however, economic growth is not merely a matter of policy. Growth, particularly in certain geographic regions, is viewed by the CCP as a political imperative, integral to the regime's survival. As subsequent discussion will demonstrate, this focus on economic growth
significantly impacts the CCP's incentives to curb environmental degradation and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Economic decline destabilizes the CCP internal dissent

Davies, 10
[Iwan, MA candidate -- Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies, Does the Financial Crisis Threaten Democracy? SAIS Review Vol 30 No 1. Spring 2010 Ebsco]
On the other hand, the crisis global economy. But as
could result in a fourth wave forward for democracy, particularly in the cases of Russia,
Iran, and China. These countries have so far been able to resist the global political trend towards democracy while becoming integrated in the
global commodity prices fall, the crisis could foster a move towards genuine democracy in these countries, threatening the survival of Russian delegated democracy, Iranian theocracy, and Chinese authoritarianism. These countries have experienced phenomenal growth driven by rising commodity prices (Russia and Iran) or trade fuelled by an artificially low exchange rate (China). A severe recession could tip the balance of political legitimacy. Devoid of significant economic growth, these regimes may face growing domestic calls for increased democratic accountability. In the Islamic Republic of Iran, falling commodity prices and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejads perceived economic mismanagement have already angered citizens. In Chinas case, double-digit growth in the past decade slowed to only 6.8 percent in the final quarter of the year.3 Energy exports have
fuelled the Russian boom, but if oil remains below $80 per barrel (the minimum price of oil as calculated by the Russian government to maintain its budget), Russian citizens may begin questioning their lack of civil liberties or an electoral system that maintains the status quo. As markets begin to stabilize, the immediate threat to these regimes appears to be diminishing. Nevertheless, understanding
the impact of the crisis on such countries can help us understand the impact that future crises may have on governments whose legitimacy depends on economic growth.
More ev
Abebe et al 10
[Dan Prof Law @ U of C Law. International Agreements, Internal Heterogeneity, and Climate Change: The Two Chinas Problem The Virginia Journal of Intl Law, Vol 50. Winter 2010 ln]
First, the
increasing divergence in standards of living between Eastern and Western China has been accompanied by the breakdown of the social safety net provided by the Maoist-era state. n57 This has left many in
Western China without proper access to health care, unemployment compensation, or housing. n58 These problems have been compounded by the fact that the CCP expects local governments to provide education, social welfare, and health benefits, further worsening the situation for those in the poorest provinces. n59 The result has been the rise of a "New Left" n60 discourse about social justice and mistrust of market
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forces. As one scholar pungently described, "popular corruption has
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discontent with rising inequality, unfair income distribution, and rampant made parts of Chinese society volatile cesspools of potential instability." n61 At the same time, the CCP must balance the need to ensure social stability [*341] with providing high rates of growth for elites. Regional disparities, economic inequality, social instability, and class conflicts raise the possibility of a new "revolutionary struggle" if the CCP is "unable to bring income redistribution to a point that is satisfactory to the lower classes without disillusioning the
entrepreneurial class and other well-to-do social strata and thereby hampering growth in the economy." n62 Second, the East-West economic divide manifests itself as an urban-rural schism as well: n63 the
vast majority of job and wealth creation has occurred in urban areas. This has produced a floating population, estimated at one-hundred million Chinese, that has left the rural areas to pursue economic opportunities (mostly in the coastal cities). n64 The population exodus has placed greater stress on the CCP to either improve economic conditions in the rural areas and the West (via the WDP) n65 to slow the flow of migrants or fund the coastal regions' absorption of unskilled labor migrating from the West. These forces generate a vicious cycle: the CCP's economic policies favoring the eastern provinces encourage migration to those provinces, requiring additional investment to maintain high levels of growth. Finally, as we noted briefly in the previous section, Western China contains a number of ethnic separatist movements that might challenge the CCP. The party has already struggled in dealing with pro-independence activities in Tibet, and it has reason to fear that the fifty-six non-Han minority groups represented in (mostly Western) China might push for selfdetermination. n66 For instance, Uighur separatists in the Xinjiang province - an area rich with mineral resources n67 - are increasingly aligning themselves with Islamic fundamentalist movements. n68 It is hard to overstate the significance of these types of prospects for unrest in a developing state dependent on natural resources for [*342] much of its growth: "The western region contains more than half the nation's reserves in 13 of the 45 main minerals ... [and] 80% of the nation's
potential hydropower and 58% of the nation's natural gas reserves." n69
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Chinese Influence Good: Growth

Chinas influence is key to Latin American regional growth
Ellis 11
Hopes for Future Access to Chinese Markets. Despite
China's impressive rates of sustained growth, only a small fraction of its population of 1.3 billion is part of the "modern" economy with the resources that allow them to purchase Western goods. Estimates of the size of the Chinese middle class range from 100 million to 150 million people,
depending on the income threshold used, although the number continues to expand rapidly.4 While selling to Chinese markets is a difficult and expensive proposition, the
sheer number of potential consumers inspires great aspirations among Latin American businesspeople, students, and government officials. The Ecuadorian banana magnate Segundo Wong, for
example, reportedly stated that if each Chinese would eat just one Ecuadorian banana per week, Ecuador would be a wealthy country.
Similar expressions can be found in many other Latin American countries as well. In the commodities sector, Latin American exports have expanded dramatically in recent years, including Chilean copper, Brazilian iron, and Venezuelan petroleum. In Argentina, Chinese demand gave rise to an entire new export-oriented soy industry where none previously existed. During the 2009 global recession, Chinese demand for commodities, based in part on a massive Chinese stimulus package oriented toward building infrastructure, was perceived as critical for extractive industries throughout Latin America, as demand from traditional export markets such as the United States and Europe fell off. Beyond commodities, certain internationally recognized Latin American brands, such as Jos Cuervo, Caf Britt, Bimbo, Modelo, Pollo Campero, and Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee, sell to the new Chinese middle class, which is open to leveraging its new wealth to "sample" the culture and cuisine of the rest of the world. Unfortunately, most products that Latin America has available to export, including light manufactures and traditional products such as coffee and tropical fruits, are relatively uncompetitive in China and subject to multiple formal and informal barriers to entry. Despite the rift between hopes and reality, the influence of China in this arena can be measured in terms of the multitude of business owners who are willing to invest millions of dollars and countless hours of their time and operate in China at a loss for years, based on the belief that the future of their corporations depends on successfully positioning themselves within the emerging Chinese market. The hopes of selling products to China have also exerted a powerful impact on political leaders seeking to advance the development of their nations. Chilean presidents Ricardo Lagos and Michelle Bachelet, for example, made Sino-Chilean trade relations the cornerstone of Chile's
economic policy, signing the first free-trade pact between the PRC and a Latin American nation in November 2005. Peruvian president Alan Garcia made similar efforts to showcase that nation as a bridge to China when it hosted the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in November 2008. Governments in
the region have also invested significant sums of money in the Chinarelated activities of trade promotion organizations such as APEX (Brazil), ProChile, ProComer (Costa Rica), Fundacin
Exportar (Argentina), and CORPEI (Ecuador), among others, as well as representative offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and other Chinese cities, with
the objective of helping their nationals to place products in those countries. Latin American leaders, from presidents to mayors, lead delegations to the PRC and fund elaborate pavilions in Chinese culture and trade shows such as the Canton Trade Fair and the Shanghai World Expo in an effort to help their countries' businesses sell products in the PRC. Hopes for Future Chinese Investment. China's combination of massive sustained trade surpluses and high internal savings rates gives the PRC significant resources that many in Latin America hope will be invested in their countries. Chinese president Hu Jintao helped to generate widespread awareness of the possibility of Chinese investment in the region during
his trip to five Latin American countries in 2004, specifically mentioning tens of billions of dollars in possible investment projects. A public controversy over whether his use of the figure $100 billion was actually referring to trade or investment has only called
more attention in Latin America to China as a potential source of funds. Although the expected Chinese investment was initially slow to materialize, today, thanks to China's growing familiarity with doing business in Latin America, and its enormous
CHINA SOI DA NAUDL

financial reserves (including a foreign currency surplus that had reached $2.5 trillion by mid-20105), the
[AUTHOR NAME]
PRC has begun to loan, or invest, tens of billions of dollars in the region, including in high-profile deals such as: $28 billion in loans to Venezuela; $16.3 billion commitment to develop the Junin-4 oil block in Venezuela's Orinoco oil belt $10 billion to Argentina to modernize its rail system; $3.1 billion to purchase the Argentine petroleum company Bridas $1 billion advance payment to Ecuador for
petroleum, and another $1.7 billion for a hydroelectric project, with negotiations under way for $3 billion to $5 billion in additional investments more than $4.4 billion in commitments to develop Peruvian
mines, including Toromocho, Rio Blanco, Galleno, and
Marcona $5 billion steel plant in the Brazilian port of Au, and another $3.1 billion to purchase a stake in Brazilian offshore oil blocks from the Norwegian company Statoil; a $10 billion loan to Brazil's Petrobras for the development of its offshore oil reserves; and $1.7 billion to purchase seven Brazilian power companies. For Latin America, the
timing of the arrival of the Chinese capital magnified its impact, with major deals ramping up in 2009, at a time when many traditional funding sources in the region were frozen because of the global financial crisis. Moreover, as Sergio Gabrielli, president of the Brazilian national oil company Petrobras has commented, China is able to negotiate large deals, integrating government and private sector activities in ways that U.S. investors cannot.6
CHINA SOI DA NAUDL
[AUTHOR NAME]
Chinese Influence Good: Turns Stability

Chinas regional influence is key to Latin American stability
Ellis 11
Beyond business ties, the
PRC has an important and growing presence in the region's military institutions . In addition to frequent visits by senior-level officers and defense leaders, Mexico and almost all of the countries of South America send officers to professional military education courses in the PRC , including a 5-month course for midgrade officers taught in Spanish in Beijing. Chinese-made clothing and nonlethal equipment are also becoming increasingly common within Latin American militaries. In addition, thanks to opportunities provided by the regimes of Ecuador, Venezuela, and Bolivia, the PRC has begun to sell sophisticated hardware in the region, such as radars and K8 and MA60 aircraft. As happened in commercial industries such as motorcycles, cars, and consumer appliances, Chinese military goods companies such as Norinco are likely to leverage their experience and a growing track record for their goods to expand their market share in the region, with the secondary consequence being that those purchasers will become more reliant on the associated Chinese logistics, maintenance, and training infrastructures
that support those products. Beyond Chinese corporations and military ties, the
PRC is also taking on a
progressively important role in regional institutions, such as the Organization of American States ( OAS ), InterAmerican Development Bank ( IADB ), and United Nations peacekeeping
operations in Haiti. Although the PRC has only observer status in the OAS, for example, its delegation is a strong contributor to the activities of the body .9 With respect to the IADB, China has leveraged its seat at the table as an opening for doing business in the region , such as the
$10.2 billion currency swap with Argentina, which it signed on the sideline of the IADB's annual meeting in March 2009. Also, through its initial financial contribution to the IADB, the
PRC became part of a special committee overseeing loans to highly impoverished countries in the region, affording it expanded contacts with and subtle pressures over countries that do not currently recognize the PRC diplomatically, including Haiti, Honduras, and Nicaragua. In the case of Haiti, Chinese leverage is further bolstered by having had police forces on the ground there since 2006,
through PRC participation in the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti.10
China turns Latin stability

Shaiken et al 13
Although the interdependencies between Mexico, the
US, and the PRC allow us to legitimately characterize their relationship as a triangle, these interdependencies must also be understood in the broader Latin American and global context in which they occur. With respect to Latin America, agreements and other interactions between the US, China, and other actors in the region impact the Mexico-US-PRC triangle particularly with respect to trade . The US-Colombia free trade agreement, for example, which was ratified in May 2012, is seen in China as a possible alternative to Mexico for Chinese and other producers seeking to enter the US market (Portafolio 2011). Similar calculations exist within the nations of Central America and the Dominican Republic
CHINA SOI DA NAUDL
[AUTHOR NAME]
concerning their own free trade agreements with the US, such as CAFTA-DR, as well as the US-Panama Free Trade Agreement (ratified in October 2011) and the US-Peru Free Trade Agreement, which went into effect in 2009. As with US commercial agreements with the rest of the region, the
success or failure of Chinese initiatives in the Americas, such as FTAs with Chile, Peru, Costa Rica, and impact the market logic for investments from Chinese and other firms in Mexico.
potentially Colombia (El Tiempo 2012), as well as loan-backed infrastructure projects in the Andes and the Caribbean, each
CHINA SOI DA NAUDL
[AUTHOR NAME]
Chinese Influence Good: Turns Security

Chinas key to sustainable regional security
Shaiken et al 13
Crime and Security Interdependencies. Growing criminal activities linking China, Mexico, and the US are driven by many of the same factors associated with the commercial ties between the three nations, including the strategic position of Mexico with respect to PRC access to the US market. To date, such triangular connections have manifested themselves in two areas: human smuggling and narcotrafficking, with money laundering remaining a matter of potential concern. With respect to human trafficking, Mexico is not only a transit country for persons migrating from Central and South America to the United States, but also for those coming from the PRC and other parts of Asia. Organized crime groups such as Red Dragon smuggle Chinese immigrants through a variety of different routes transiting Europe and the Americas, frequently leveraging Chinese communities en route, generally with the US and Canada as final destinations. As of mid-2012, such routes included entry through the Mexican Pacific ports of Puerto Vallarta in Jalisco, Manzanillo in Colima, and Coyoacn, in Mazatln. In other cases, Chinese immigrants are smuggled into South America - often through Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru - and from there, via land routes through Central America8, crossing into Mexico at entry points such as Frontera Corozal in the state of Chiapas and on to Tapachula, where there is a sizeable Chinese community. From that point, Chinese migrants reportedly follow a route that begins with a journey by train to the Atlantic coast, and then follow the coast northward through territory controlled by Los Zetas, to ultimately arrive in the United States (Ellis 2012/a/b). Still others arrive by air directly to Mexico City, where the activity of Chinese trafficking networks has been publicly reported by the Mexican Attorney Generals office. In addition to human trafficking, the supply chain for illegal drugs creates another connection between the PRC, Mexico, and the United States. Mexican cartels, such as Sinaloa and Tijuana, obtain many of their precursor chemicals from Asia including, but not limited to, essential ingredients for methamphetamines, such as ephedrine and pseudoephedrine (El Peridico de Mxico 2011; La Prensa 2009; Ellis 2012/a; El Universal 2010). The Mexican cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacin, for example, is believed to import ephedrine from China and India to produce methamphetamines, which are ultimately sold in the United States (Noticias24 2012). Mexican authorities have made multiple seizures of such precursor chemicals arriving from China and India in recent years at Mexican commercial ports such as Lzaro Crdenas and Michoacn (Carvallo 2012; Noticias24 2012) Shipments of precursor chemicals have also been intercepted coming into other Latin American countries such as Peru, and have been linked to Mexican cartels such as those of Sinaloa and Tijuana (Reforma 2011), suggesting the emergence of a global narcotics supply chain with China, Mexico, and the US as key nodes for source chemicals, management and production, and consumption, respectively. With respect to money laundering, the proliferation of Chinese commercial banks in the region offers new options for Mexico-based cartels to convert drug earnings generated in the United States into legitimate income in Mexico. The use of Chinese companies and banks is attractive due to the language barrier and a lack of close institutional relationships, making it difficult for Mexican and US authorities to follow money trails into the PRC. Although public data on such activities is difficult to come by, reports in the media provide anecdotal
CHINA SOI DA NAUDL
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evidence of the problem. In March 2010, for example, the Mexican Federal Police made public a case in which a Colombian group, in their dealings with the Mexican cartel La Familia, had sent part of their earnings to the PRC (El Comercio 2010). Although the use of PRC-based companies and banks for money laundering is currently in its infancy, the expansion of Chinese banking activities in Mexico, lines of credit to facilitate conversion of RNB into Mexican pesos, and increasing commercial activities that provide potential cover for illegal transactions suggest that this dimension of the triangular USChina-Mexico relationship will become an increasing challenge over time to law enforcement authorities. In addition to organized crime, the US, Mexico, and the PRC impact each other in the security and defense arena in other important ways, with perceptions and sensitivities on all sides playing a significant role in the dynamic. As the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) and Chinese defense contractors such as the NORINCO group look to Mexico, for example, the latters geographic proximity to the US, coupled with the concern over alarming US policymakers by meddling in the US backyard, has inspired caution (Ellis 2011/c). Reciprocally, the Mexican government under Felipe Caldern, conscious of US security assistance to Mexico (including the $1.6 billion received under Plan Mrida) and working to strengthen US-Mexican security cooperation, was arguably cautious in pursuing ties with the PRC which could have undermined the US-Mexico security relationshipparticularly in a highly polarized presidential election year in the United States.9 Despite such considerations, the Mexican armed forces (SEDENA) and navy (SEMAR) each continue to work with their PLA counterparts regarding exchanges of personnel, attendance by Mexican officers in professional education courses at the PLA National Defense University in Champing, and high-level officer visits, such as the September 2010 visit by Chinese Defense Minister Liang Guanglie to both the Mexican ministry of defense (SEDENA), and ministry of the navy (SEMAR) (PDO 2010).
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[AUTHOR NAME]
Chinese Influence Good: Turns Development

Chinas key to regional development
Ellis 11
China as a Development Model. The
tremendous, sustained economic growth that the PRC has enjoyed since opening up to the world in 1978 has caused many in Latin America to look to China's integration of capitalism and authoritarian politics as a development model, even while the U.S. combination of liberal democracy, free
markets, and privatization is increasingly
seen as ineffective for solving the region's endemic problems , such as corruption, poverty, and inequality. For traditional Latin American elites, the Chinese model is particularly attractive because it suggests that it is possible to achieve prosperity and growth without relinquishing political power.
CHINA SOI DA NAUDL
[AUTHOR NAME]
Chinese Influence Good: Turns Regional Growth

China not the US is key to Latin American growth
Ellis 11
Access to Latin American Markets. Latin
American markets are becoming increasingly valuable for Chinese companies because they allow the PRC to expand and diversify its export base at a time when economic growth is slowing in traditional markets such as the United States and Europe. The region has also proven an effective market for Chinese efforts to sell more sophisticated, higher value added products in sectors seen as strategic, such as automobiles, appliances, computers and telecommunication equipment, and aircraft. In expanding access for its products through free trade accords with countries such as Chile, Peru, and Costa Rica, and penetrating markets in Latin American countries with existing manufacturing sectors such as Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina, the PRC has often had to overcome resistance by organized and often politically well-connected established interests in those nations. In doing so, the hopes of access to Chinese markets and investments among key groups of businesspeople and government officials in those nations have played a key role in the political will to overcome the resistance. In Venezuela, it was said that the prior Chinese ambassador to Venezuela, Zheng Tuo, was one of the few
people in the country who could call President Chvez on the telephone and get an instant response if an issue arose regarding a Chinese company.
CHINA SOI DA NAUDL
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Chinese Influence Good: Turns Trade

Chinese influence controls trade
Shaiken et al 13
The end of the Cold War and East-West confrontation ushered in an environment conducive to economic globalization. Globalization is the defining feature of our current age. Countries have connected with each other more closely than ever before, and the cross-border flow of capital, goods, and personnel has become an integral part of modern life. When adjusting to the tide of globalization, some countries make special arrangements in their region so that their interests can be better served. Regional cooperation is used to manage and even control the flows of capital, goods, and personnel in any given region, yet the hindrance of cross-border flows of production elements does not seem to be a goal of such cooperation. Regional cooperation is not meant to resist globalization. It is simply an instrument developed by countries to aid in adjusting to the globalization process. It
would be wrong to use regional cooperation as a synonym for exclusiveness, as there is no reason that regional cooperation should prevent the formation of new international partnerships. Regional
cooperation in this case in the form of the North American free trade zone can substantially influence relations between the United States, Mexico, and China. The North American free trade zone was established in the 1990s, and is composed of the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Each countrys economy complements the others, given that each is in a different economic stage and has its own unique advantages. The U.S., Mexico, and Canada together form a solid market, conducive to the production of manufactured goods and energy. As a major supplier of manufactured goods, Mexico benefits a great deal from this type of cooperation. However, North America is not isolated from the global economy. With the establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO) on January 1, 1995, the United States - as a global superpower and the largest economic body in the world can no longer constrain itself to a regional market. It is almost inevitable for North American countries to come into contact with actors from other parts of the world. Some countries may find that their shares in regional markets are diminishing with the arrival of outside countries prompted by the framework of the WTO, yet the presence and influence of external countries may bring new opportunities to these regions. For example, in regards to the relationship between China and Mexico, the two countries may compete to some degree in terms of exporting to the United States. However, Chinese-Mexican relations go far beyond exporting to the U.S. market . As an emerging power and a representative of a region enjoying robust economic development, China now means more to Mexico economically than does the United States . Firstly, the adjustment of Chinas economic structure may help to change the false impression of Chinese-Mexican trade relations and allow Mexico to further pursue interests in economic cooperation with China. In regards to Chinese-Mexican relations, the common perception is that the two countries compete with each other in the U.S. market due to the fact that their exports are very similar. However, this may not necessarily be the case, as some scholars have pointed out that the competition between China and Mexico has been exaggerated, and in fact the two nations complement each other in more aspects than in which they compete (Xie 2005). Moreover, China does not want to become involved in trade conflicts with other developing countries, given that it is trying to change the mode of its economic development and update its export structure. With a stronger focus on bolstering its domestic market and supplying more high-value products to the world, China hopes that it can further coordinate its own production with Mexico and other developing countries. In addition, China is able to provide Mexico with
CHINA SOI DA NAUDL
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new markets and investors. It would be erroneous , therefore, to simply define Chinese-Mexican economic relations in terms of competition for the US market. Chinas increasing engagement with Mexico and Latin America has the potential to positively impact numerous aspects of these transnational relations. Furthermore, Chinas involvement in North and Latin America can also help Mexico to reduce certain negative outcomes resulting from North American cooperation. Generally speaking, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is a beneficial arrangement for each of its three signatories (The U.S., Mexico, and Canada), but this does not imply seamless cooperation between them.1 In the case of Mexico, the country benefits from exporting manufactured goods to the U.S., as well as receiving capital in the form of U.S. investments, but suffers where bilateral agricultural interests are involved. Even more harmful to U.S.-Mexico relations is the exercise of U.S. political influence. As Mexicos economy becomes increasingly dependent upon the U.S. market, the United States has more political leverage over Mexico, creating some uncomfortable situations for Mexico on the international stage. For example, during the administration of President Vicente Fox, in order to further develop its relations with the United States, Mexico was forced to distance itself from left-wing Latin American governments that have traditionally been its close allies, such as Cuba and Venezuela (Chen 2007). The gesture assuaged the United States to some extent, but ultimately Mexicos influence in Latin America decreased and the critical problems between Mexico and the U.S. regarding immigration and drugs were not resolved. Indeed, Mexicos over-dependence on the U.S. market has been a political disadvantage in its relations outside players to balance the influence of the United States.
with its northern neighbor.
Mexico needs economic
In this context, diversifying
cooperation with China and other countries would be beneficial for Mexico . Thirdly, China can also act as a bridge that Mexico can use to engage with other East Asian countries. East Asia is a region that has been attracting global attentions due to its strong economic performance. The region has not only maintained a high growth rate, but it also has a vast market with great potential, with over one billion people in the region entering into a so-called middle class. Therefore, the U.S. is increasing its investment in and shifting its attention to Asia - actions that would benefit Mexico as well. However, it appears that Mexico has not found an effective way to develop cooperative relations in East Asia. The U.S., for example, does not seem overly eager to involve Mexico in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Mexico therefore must depend on itself to step into the western region of the Pacific, making it even more crucial for Mexico to strengthen its relations with East Asian countries. China, as a major player in East Asia, has extensive economic and trade relations with other countries in the region, and could help Mexico put its foot in the door, so to speak. China and Mexico, therefore, have the potential to help each other achieve intra-regional cooperation .
Pushing China out collapses complex interdependence thats key

Shaiken et al 13
Trade and Investment. The
principal commercial interdependencies between Mexico, the PRC, and the US involve (1) competition between Mexico and China for sales to the US market, (2) final assembly of products in Mexico for entry into the US market under the provisions of NAFTA, and (3) the interrelationship between US-to-Mexico revenue flows from exports and remittances and Mexican purchases of Chinese products. As established in various studies, Mexico and the PRC are frequently in competition for the US market (Dussel Peters 2005; Gallagher and Porzecanski 2010), implying that increasing purchase of Chinese manufactured goods by US consumers in recent years has, to some degree, come at the expense of Mexico-based manufacturers and Mexican jobs.
CHINA SOI DA NAUDL
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The competition for the US market, as it has played itself out in the last decade has not only involved competition between Mexican and Chinese exporters, but also decisions by foreign-owned multinational firms about where to conduct outsourcing operations.5 When the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was signed in December 1992, a key selling-point of the agreement for Mexican audiences, in the eyes of then Mexican President Carlos Salinas, was the prospect of attracting foreign investment to the country, with a particular interest to the access that Mexico would provide to the US market (Salinas de Gortari 2008). By the early 2000s, however, the presence of the PRC in the equation, was resulting in dynamics not fully contemplated during the debate over approval of the original agreement. With the entry of the PRC into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, multinational companies increasingly began to locate their manufacturing operations in the PRC. Although the displacement of foreign direct investment from the Mexican maquiladora sector to China (Garca Herrero and Santabrbara 2005) was strongly emphasized during the early years following the PRCs accession to the WTO, by 2007, a new dynamic had begun to emerge: Chinese companies investing in Mexico, with the objective of securing access not only to the Mexican market, but also to tariff-free access to the US under the terms of NAFTA. Examples proposed auto plants by
Chinese automaker FAW in Hidalgo and Geely in Leon (Dickerson 2007) a plant for the Chinese computer company Lenovo for manufacturing laptops in Monterrey, as well as a cloth manufacturing facility in Durango for the Chinese firm Sinatex (Hernndez Camargo 2011). The
economic interdependence between Mexico, the US, and China via the US market was further highlighted by the PRCs January 2012 proposal to negotiate a free trade agreement with Mexico (Daz 2011), providing incentives for Chinese (as well as other) companies to conduct final assembly operations in Mexico to export to the US market, not only to avoid tariffs under the provisions of NAFTA, but also to more effectively serve the US market due to Mexicos relative proximity. The dynamics generated by such interdependence, however, have not been limited to trade
and investment.
Commercial interactions between two of the parties in the
triangle frequently have political repercussions in the third . Mexicos disappointing economic performance during the first decade after the ratification of NAFTA, due in part to the new competition from the PRC, helped to fuel frustration in Mexico over unmet expectations of the accord with the US and Canada (Mora Legaspi 2011; Garca Estrada 2012). Similarly, the location of Chinese factories in the Mexican maquiladora sector prompted concerns in the US that through NAFTA, Mexico could become a back-door for the entry of Chinese products (CER 2012). From the Chinese perspective, US-Mexico collaboration on anti-dumping cases may be seen to have adversely impacted Chinas relationship with both (Vzquez, Lpez-Portillo, and Vzquez Bravo 2008). In addition to economic interactions between two parties producing political effects on the third, non-economic behaviors of one may impact the trade and investment relationship between the other two. It can be argued, for example, that the US demand for drugs and the flow of US-purchased firearms into Mexico has contributed to narco-violence in the north of Mexico, where Chinese and other investors have contemplated setting up operations. Although many of the interdependencies between Mexico, the US, and the PRC revolve around the US market, there is also an important relationship between flows of export and remittance income from the US to Mexico and Mexican purchases of Chinese products. With respect to export income, apart from the previously mentioned issue of production by PRC companies in Mexico, a portion of the profits from Mexican exports to the US, as well as the wages of the Mexican workers employed in generating such exports, ultimately go toward the purchase of Chinese consumer goods. Moreover, in the process of producing goods to export to the United States, Mexican
firms incorporate intermediate goods from the PRC, with the implication that sales of Mexican products to the United States both directly and indirectly drive Mexican purchases of Chinese goods, including clothing, shoes, toys, appliances, motorcycles, cars, computers, telecommunication equipment, and intermediate products. Beyond
profits and wages, another revenue flow from the US to Mexico that impacts the purchase of Chinese goods comes in the form of remittances. In 2010,
Mexicans working in the United States sent an estimated $21 billion in remittances to their families and friends in Mexico, a more significant source of income for the country than foreign tourism (Jimnez 2011). The
impact of each of the above-mentioned revenue streams on Mexican consumption of Chinese goods is distinct. Remittance and wage income goes directly to families, and is therefore arguably the most correlated with Mexican purchases of Chinese consumer goods. The Mexican production process itself, by contrast, is linked to the consumption of
CHINA SOI DA NAUDL intermediate goods from the PRC, while the corporate earnings of exporters is tied to Mexicos purchase of Chinese capital goods.
[AUTHOR NAME]
CHINA SOI DA NAUDL
[AUTHOR NAME]
AT//Chinese Softpower Inevitable

It could go either way it has a tenuous foothold in the region
Ellis 11
Affinity for Chinese Culture. The
PRC has actively promoted Chinese culture and language throughout the
world, including through such landmark events as the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and 2010 World Expo in Shanghai, visited by an estimated 5 million foreign tourists,12 as well as establishing more than 282 Confucius institutes worldwide, including 20 in Latin America. Cultural exchanges are a featured part of China's dealings with Latin America, consistent with the "nonthreatening" character that Beijing wishes to emphasize in these interactions. Despite PRC "marketing efforts," by contrast to the global impact of U.S. culture, Chinese culture is arguably one of the PRC's weakest levers of soft power in Latin America, with interest in Chinese culture arguably reflecting, more than driving, China's influence in the region. Although some Chinese culture is reaching the Latin American mainstream, perceptions of it in Latin America are generally limited and superficial, sometimes based on media reports or experiences with ethnic Chinese living in those countries. Such perceptions are often mixed, including respect for the Chinese work ethic, a sense of mystery regarding Chinese culture, and often a sense of mistrust arising from the perceived differentness of that culture and commercial competition from Chinese products.
CHINA SOI DA NAUDL
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AT//Chinese Softpower Fails

Chinese influences effective in the context of Latin America
Ellis 11
[R. Evan. Assistant Professor of National Security Studies in the Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies at the National Defense University. Chinese Soft Power i n Latin America: A Case Study Joint Force Quarterly, Vol 60. 2011. http://www.ndu.edu/press/chinese-soft-power-latin-america.html]
China as "the Wave of the Future." Perhaps China's
greatest source of soft power is the most intangible. China's emergence as a key global player is a phenomenon that has assumed almost mystical proportions within Latin America. The rapid growth in PRC trade with and investment in Latin America, and the expansion of contacts at all levels, only reinforce the perceived significance of "China's rise," as observed from Latin America. In addition to opportunism for commerce, Latin America's belief in the rise of China and its globally transformational implications draws the attention of the people and leaders of the region to the PRC and shapes their course of action. Costa Rican president Oscar Arias, for example, established regular diplomatic relations with the PRC as a necessary part of ensuring the relevance of his country as an international actor. At the popular level, the rise of China is most likely behind a swelling interest in the Chinese language in the region. The dedication of 5 or more years by students to gain a basic capability in the Mandarin language and its character set, for example, is arguably driven by their calculation that the ability to communicate in Chinese will be fundamental to the pursuit of opportunities in the PRC, and with Chinese businessmen and government officials, in the future.
CHINA SOI DA NAUDL
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AT//China Bad
Chinese interaction in Latin American markets inevitable
Shaiken et al 13
Several policy recommendations result from this analysis. First, solely
bilateral negotiations, i.e. between just the U.S. and China or just Mexico and China, are not sufficient given the quick and profound shifts in trade occurring in the NAFTA region. Thus, long-term NAFTA-China trade negotiations seem to not only be plausible, but inevitable, given the comprehensive production and trade integration between Mexico and the U.S . Second, NAFTA countries require additional policies and incentives to encourage competitiveness in the region, particularly regarding the manufacturing sector. Behind the substantial trade losses since the year 2000 are million of jobs. If the governments of the United States and Mexico are sincere in their aim to maintain and increase highquality jobs, manufacturing will play a critical role. Coordination of policies in these areas within NAFTA from industrial and innovation policies to research and development should be promoted actively not only at the national
level, but at the regional level as well.
Increased influence doesnt result in military modernization

Lampton 7
[David M., Dean of Faculty, Professor of China Studies, Director of China Studies at Johns Hopkins, The Faces of Chinese Power, Foreign Affairs, Winter 2007. Ln]
Fortified by both globalization and its economic policies, China has thus become an ardent supporter of the existing international economic orderan almost total reversal from Maos opposition in the
1950s and 1960s. In international relations, dominant states typically want to preserve the status quo and rising states want to change it. But today, it is China that wants to preserve key features of the current world order,whereas the United States, the lone superpower, seems bent on shaking it up by creating coalitions of the willing assembled outside established international organizations. Chinas
national strategy is designed to continue its fast domestic economic growth, the regimes principal legitimizing factor besides nationalism; attract maximum resources (technology, investment, and strategic materials) from the international system; and reduce external threats that might deplete its resources. This strategy does not emphasize rapid military growth, and with good reason: fast expansion of the armed forces would alarm the outside world and likely produce countervailing coalitions; high military expenditures would also drain Beijing of badly needed human and material resources just as President Hu Jintao, emphasizing the importance of turning China
into a harmonious society, sets out to expand human, environmental, and infrastructure investment for those Chinese left behind by the countrys rapid development. After Maos dependence on coercive power and Dengs on economic power, China
now seeks a more
balanced mix that also uses idea power.
Chinas peaceful
Rosenberg 5
[David. Prof Poli Sci Middlebury. Dire Straits: Competing Security Priorities in the South China Sea http://www.japanfocus.org/-David-Rosenberg/1773 2005]
Has there been any big shift in the balance of power around the Taiwan Strait that warrants this U.S. response?
The Chinese defense budget has grown by double-digit increases for the past fourteen years. This year it's up by 12 percent. But that is
not significantly faster than the Chinese economy as a whole is growing. China is modernizing its defenses -- adding anti-ship missiles to aircraft,
CHINA SOI DA NAUDL

acquiring AWACS-airborne early warning and control systems, guided missile destroyers and frigates. However,
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its power projection capabilities are limited. It lacks any long-range amphibious capability or support infrastructure to supply forces over long distances for a protracted period. It also lacks heavy cargo-carrying aircraft, comprehensive air defenses, seaworthy ships, and aircraft carriers. Given the current state of Chinese equipment and training, the Chinese have no capability to pursue an expansionist maritime policy in the Taiwan Strait or the South China Sea. [1] By contrast, the U.S. has overwhelming military superiority and an expansive network of military bases across the Asia-Pacific. The U.S. Pacific Fleet is the world's largest naval command, including
approximately 190 ships, about 1,400 Navy and Marine Corps aircraft and 35 shore installations. Over 300,000 Navy, Army, Air Force, Marine Corps, Special Operations, and Intelligence military personnel are integrated under the unified command of PACOM, the U.S. Pacific Command. What are China's strategic goals between the Straits? China's
Defense White Paper of 2002 emphasizes the importance of pursuing peaceful external relations initiatives through multilateral, cooperative approaches to promote domestic development. The most recent Defense White Paper, published in December of 2004, reiterates this priority. More important than statements of good intentions, however, China has taken significant steps to implement this goal. It was evident in the Framework Agreement on ASEAN-China Comprehensive Economic Cooperation, negotiated in November 2002. That led to the agreement signed in November 2004 to implement an ASEAN-China Free
Trade Area (FTA) by 2010.
CHINA SOI DA NAUDL
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Aff
CHINA SOI DA NAUDL
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Slayer 2AC
US influence in Latin Americas resilient and the thesis of the DA is wrong
Duddy & Mora 5-1
[Patrick US Ambassador to Venezuela until 2010 and Senior Lecturer at Duke. And Frank Director of Latin American Center at Florida Intl University and former Assistant Secretary of Defense Western Hemisphere (09-13). Latin America: Is U.S. influence waning? 5/1/13 http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/05/01/3375160/latinamerica-is-us-influence.html#storylink=cpy]
As Moises Naim notes in his recent book, The End of Power, there
has been an important change in power distribution in the world away from states toward an expanding and increasingly mobile set of actors that are dramatically shaping the nature and scope of global relationships. In Latin America, many of the most substantive and dynamic forms of engagement are occurring in a web of cross-national relationships involving small and large companies, people-to-people contact through student exchanges and social media, travel and migration . Trade and investment remain the most enduring and measurable dimensions of U.S. relations with the region. It is certainly the case that our economic interests alone would justify more U.S. attention to the region. Many observers who worry about declining U.S. influence in this area point to the rise of trade with China and the presence of European companies and investors. While it is true that other countries are important to the economies of Latin America and the Caribbean, it is also still true that the United States is by far the largest and most important economic partner of the region and trade is growing even with those countries with which we do not have free trade agreements. An area of immense importance to regional economies that we often overlook is the exponential growth in travel, tourism and migration. It is
commonplace to note the enormous presence of foreign students in the United States but in 2011, according to the Institute of International Education, after Europe, Latin America was the second most popular destination for U.S. university students. Hundreds of thousands of U.S. tourists travel every year to Latin America and the Caribbean helping to support thousands of jobs. From 2006-2011 U.S.
nongovernment organizations, such as churches, think tanks and universities increased the number of partnerships with their regional cohorts by a factor of four. Remittances to Latin America and the Caribbean from the United States totaled $64 billion in 2012. Particularly for the smaller economies of Central America and the Caribbean these flows can sometimes constitute more than 10 percent of gross domestic product. Finally, one should not underestimate the resiliency of U.S. soft power in the region. The power of national reputation, popular culture, values and institutions continues to contribute to U.S. influence in ways that are difficult to measure and impossible to quantify . Example: Despite 14 years of strident anti-American rhetoric during the
Chvez government, tens of thousand of Venezuelans apply for U.S. nonimmigrant visas every year, including many thousands of Chvez loyalists. Does this mean we can feel comfortable relegating U.S. relations with the hemisphere to the second or third tier of our international concerns? Certainly not. We
have real and proliferating interests in the region. As the president and his team head to have many individual national partners in the Americas. We dont need a new template for relations with the hemisphere as a whole or another grand U.S.-Latin America strategy. A greater commitment to work more intensely with the individual countries on the issues most relevant to them would be appropriate. The United States still has the economic and cultural heft in the region to play a fundamental role and to advance its own
Mexico and Costa Rica, it is important to recognize the importance of our ties to the region. We
interests .
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[AUTHOR NAME]
Link NUQ
Economic engagement now
Valencia 5/20/13
(Robert contributing writer for Global Voices Online, New York-based political analyst, U.S. and Latin America Economic Cooperation Without Militarization? www.worldpolicy.org/blog/2013/05/20/us-and-latin-america-economic-cooperationwithout-militarization)
President Obamas meeting with Mexicos President Enrique Pea Nieto centered on the historic economic relationship between the two countries, and furthered their conversation on economic and commercial
initiatives as well as immigration issues. Additionally, Pea Nieto highlighted Mexicos economic growth and the necessity fo r bolstering student exchange. Both
leaders agreed to create an economic team led by Vice President Joe Biden and Mexican Secretary of the Treasury Luis Videgaray. They resolved to create projects to improve infrastructure and security along the 3,000 kilometer-long border, one of the worlds largest.
TPP makes increased economic engagement inevitable

Sarukhan 12
(Arturo Sarukhan, Mexican Ambassador to the U.S. since February 2007, Viewpoints: What Should the Top Priority Be for U.S. Mexican Relations? American Society/Council of the Americas, 12/3/12, www.as-coa.org/articles/viewpoints-whatshould-top-priority-be-us-mexican-relations)
Over the past two decades, NAFTA has dramatically altered the way Mexico and the United States engage with one another. However, much more can and should be done to bring North American competitiveness back to a starring role on the global stage. This is why the participation of all three North American countries in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) will be so important. The
TPP will enable us to discuss measures that meet the needs and challenges of twenty-first-century free and fair trade, such as compatibility of regulatory systems, new environmental provisions, strong protection for intellectual property rights, and emerging areas such as digital technologies and e-commerce. The TPP will further deepen and strengthen the integrated supply and production chains between our two countries. And as a true coalition of the freetrade willing in the Americas and across the Pacific Rim, the TPP therefore represents the next step in a North American Grand Strategy. In addition to the TPP, we need to continue strengthening the participation and commitment of civil society and the private sector across our common border, as they are true costakeholders in our bilateral efforts toward economic progress.
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Coop Inev
Cooperations inevitable
Seelke 13
[Claire. Specialist in Mexico Affairs at the Congressional Research Service. Mexico and the 112th Congress 1/29/13 http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL32724.pdf+
Over the last five years, U.S.-Mexican
security cooperation has intensified significantly as a result of the Mrida Initiative. U.S.-Mexican cooperation has evolved to the point where it is able to continue even amidst serious strain caused by sometimes unforeseen events. For example, bilateral efforts against weapons trafficking continued even after the failed Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) operation dubbed Fast and Furious resulted in firearms being trafficked into Mexico. 47 U.S. training and law enforcement support efforts have advanced even as U.S. personnel have been injured and even killed while working in Mexico. The U.S. government has helped Mexican govern ment investigate the circumstances under which two U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employees were wounded on August 24, 2012, as their vehicle came under heavy fire from Mexican Federal Police.
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AT//China
US-China influence isnt zero-sum
Xiaoxia 5-6
*Wang. Staff Writer for the Economic Observer. In America's Backyard: China's Rising Influence In Latin America The Economic Observer, 5/6/13 http://worldcrunch.com/china-2.0/in-america-039-s-backyard-china-039-s-risinginfluence-in-latin-america/foreign-policy-trade-economy-investmentsenergy/c9s11647/ ]
For South America, China and the United States, this is not a zero-sum game, but a multiple choice of mutual benefit s and synergies. Even if China has become the Latin American economys new upstart, it is
still
not in a position to challenge the strong and diverse influence that the United States has
over two centuries in the region.
accumulated
The relationship is trilateral and US engagement helps China

Shaiken et al 13
If one simply looks at Chinas trade surplus with the United States and Mexico, one would assume that China plays a very influential role in the triangular relations between these three nations. However, as the Chinese saying goes, there is no diplomacy for a weak country, implying that developing nations inherently assume a submissive role in relations with economic superpowers. In this sense then, economic power becomes the most important factor in the context of international diplomatic relations. Applied to the framework of the trilateral relationship between China, the United States, and Mexico, this theory clearly assumes the existence of one key player . There is no doubt that the United States is a superpower, not only among these three countries, but also in the world. Although the International Monetary Fund predicts that China will surpass the U.S. in 2016 to become the worlds largest economy, the fact remains that China is still a developing country and only one of the regional powers in Asia, unlike the United States, which is a leading global superpower. The economic performance of the United States remains very impressive. Even though the economy of the U.S. was significantly affected by the international financial crisis, and is still in the process of recovering from an economic recession, the United States finds itself even now in a unipolar moment of unchallenged superiority . Therefore, although China is referred to as the second largest economy in the world, such accolades would be dampened if Chinas situation were viewed comparatively, as a whole, with the United States. It is clear that
Chinas economic status has been increasing in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP), which is the correct unit of measurement when examining the cost of living. However, the traditional measure of GDP, calculated in dollars at current exchange rates, [indicates] that the U.S. economy remains nearly six times the size of Chinas (Stallings 2008:241). Furthermore, it
is widely known that
competitiveness indicates the level of a countrys productivity. According to a report by the World Economic Forum, the U.S. is ranked much higher than both China and Mexico (China: 26th and Mexico: 58th), even though the U.S. continues its decline for the third year in a row, falling one more place to fifth position (WEF 2011). All of the above-mentioned data indicates that the United States continues to be a prevailing superpower in the
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world a particularly relevant fact for both China and Mexico. As for these two nations, both are developing
countries, both are listed among the middle-income countries, and their economic performance and GDP per capita are much lower than that of the U.S. However, when we compare China and Mexico to each other, we see that both countries are in the process of modernization, although comparatively speaking, Mexicos per capita GDP is 2.3 times higher than that of China. As the most powerful country in the triangular relationship, the United States has become the most important trade partner for both China and Mexico, as well as a key player in other facets of their relationship: (1). For
China, the United States is its most important economic partner, a status which is supported by the fact that the U.S. is the second largest export destination for Chinas manufacturing products, following only behind Asia as a whole. What is more, China is the most significant shareholder of U.S. stock, and both countries enjoy a close, mutually beneficial relationship in terms of their economies, their militaries, and their cultural and interpersonal exchange. To a certain extent, China and the U.S. are mutually dependent on each other. However, it is worth noting that the United States holds the upper hand in terms of the bilateral relationship between the two nations. Superficially speaking, Chinas swift economic growth has greatly strengthened its economy , hence the reason it has been regarded as world-class economic power (Smith 2008:215). However, the commodity boom is unlikely to last forever (He 2012:31). Chinas manufacturing road to modernity has become rocky and uncertain for a number of reason: The first is related to increasing labor costs in China, not only compared to what they were before, but also in terms of
neighboring countries such as Vietnam and India. According to AlixPartner Consultancy, compensation costs in East Asia a region that includes China but excludes Japan rose from 32% of U.S. wages in 2002 to 43% in 2007. And since wages have been increasing at a rate of 8% to 9% a year, taxes have been increasing as well. East Asias overall costs have doubtlessly escalated even more during the last two years (DevonshireEllis 2011). The
effects of wage increase in China have been exemplified by American companies like Adidas leaving China in response to escalated labor costs. What this ultimately means for China is a gradual loss of its comparative advantage as the lowest-cost producer in the manufacturing sector a status that it has maintained for decades. Secondly, United States-based multinational companies (MNCs) are crucial in determining the structure of the global production system, labor mobilization, and international trade flow. China, as the final assembler of goods produced by the MNCs, has enticed such companies with low costs of labor. This
has incentivized many MNCs in the manufacturing sector to build accessory plants in China, which now account for over 60% of Chinas exports.2 Consequently, MNCs receive a large percentage of these export profits, calling into question the true trade surplus that China has with the U.S. and Mexico. In other words, the
United States, as a primary base for MNC-operations, will be a determining factor regarding Chinas future economic performance if China continues to follow its manufacturing road. Last but not least, China is currently facing numerous domestic problems, such as: (1) a rich government with poor citizens, suggesting that the benefits of economic growth have not been enjoyed by a significant portion of the population; (2) rampant social inequality; and (3) inefficiency of state-owned enterprises, incomplete economic reform, and a semi-market and semi-command economic system. Chinese economist
Wu Jinglian has argued that Chinas future will be decided based on whether the country advances to a law-based market economy or reverts back to a command economy and state capitalism (Wu 2012). The aforementioned factors have impeded Chinas economic development, supporting the contention that Chinas economic clout and status should not be exaggerated (Roett and Paz 2008:9). In short,
it is necessary for China to explore a new model of development - that is, from an export-driven model to one based on innovation - in order to sustain its economic growth.
No trade-off the plan facilitates a trilateral relationship thats key

Shaiken et al 13
The analysis of Ping Wang highlights that
in the Mexico-US-China triangular trade relationship, the United States
is the key player . While Chinas presence has increased, the United States remains a critical influence on both Mexico and China. Furthermore, the author suggests that Chinas rise and emergence in terms of trade
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and investments in LAC, and specifically in regards to this triangular relationship, will slow increasingly in the future, considering its specialization in industrial commodities and products, rising wages in China, and the high number of multinational corporations involved in Chinese exports. For Ping Wang, the politically and historically subordinated role of Mexico with the United States, in contrast to Chinas increasing regional and global status, is a basis for understanding future scenarios in which the Mexico-United States relationship is more stable in comparison to that of China and the United States (where the US, for example, views China as a threat).
Chinese influence doesnt undercut US hegemony

Shaiken et al 13
Secondly, although
the U.S. pays close attention to Chinas engagement with Latin American countries, it knows that China does not really have the capability to challenge the position of the United States on the American continent. It is true that Chinese-Latin American relations have developed rapidly over the past ten years, especially in regards to three aspects: Firstly, China has established connections with the entire American continent, not only developing economic relations with the major powers in the region, but also strengthening its cooperation with many
medium-sized countries as well as regional organizations. Some countries in the region, however, do not maintain diplomatic relations with Mainland China, and do with Taiwan. Secondly, China
has begun to pursue universal cooperation with Latin
American nations, with more and more dimensions emerging in its various relationships including tourism, cultural exchange, security issues, climate change, etc. Thirdly, topics of interest between China and Latin American countries have gone beyond the bilateral and regional levels, with these nations exchanging views on the world order and global affairs. Thus, China believes that its relationship with Latin America has strategic importance.2 Certain Chinese scholars
have pointed out that the Chinese-Latin American relationship has exhibited unprecedented growth in the new century (Zheng and Sun 2009).
Chinas increasing reinforcement of its relationship with Latin American countries, however, does not imply any intention to enter into geopolitical competition with the United States . Economic development is the primary goal of Chinas cooperation with Latin American countries. Indeed, China wants to expand its exchange with Latin American countries to include other areas such as education, culture, politics, security, etc., given Chinas belief that one-dimensional relationships are both unhealthy and unsustainable. Chinese-Latin American economic cooperation needs to be both complemented and supported by diplomacy in other areas. Therefore, from the Chinese perspective, developing comprehensive relationships with Latin American countries has little to do with strategic or military competition . In fact, Chinas engagement with Latin American countries in the realm of security is quite limited , compared with their other economic and political partnerships. The Chinese military has just begun to interact with its Latin American counterparts. There have been no regular or institutional arrangements between the Chinese and Latin American militaries, let alone any joint actions between them. Thus, the reality of the Chinese-Latin American military relationship is not that it has been developing too much or too quickly. On the contrary, the question becomes how this facet of the relationship can catch up with the rapid growth observed in other areas. What this implies is that China is not pursuing strategic competition with the United States in Latin America. If the U.S. is to be concerned about anything, it should be the potentially catalytic effects on Latin American economic growth caused by Chinas presence in the region.
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Multiple barriers to Chinese influence in Latin America and challengers to American control are inevitable
Ellis 11
The growth and exercise of soft power by the People's Republic of China have limits that are important to recognize. As with the sources of Chinese soft power, those limits are not the same as the limits to U.S. soft power. Limits to Chinese soft power in Latin America principally arise from the significant gap between the two cultures, the associated difficulty in learning each other's culture and language, a lack of understanding of each side by the other, and a pervasive sense of mistrust of the Chinese within Latin America generally. The cultural gap between China and Latin America touches upon many areas, from differing consumer preferences limiting the appeal of Latin American exports such as coffee and beef, to different attitudes toward authority in business and administrative dealings, which contribute to labor problems and other difficulties where the PRC has operated in Latin America. One of the most significant barriers between the PRC and Latin America is language. Whereas a relatively significant portion of Latin Americans have some ability in English, very few speak or read Chinese, and even fewer Chinese can communicate in Spanish, although the number is growing.16
Although Chinese-language programs are proliferating in Latin America, the difficulty of and time required for learning Mandarin and the Chinese character set are a powerful impediment to the growth of ties between the two cultures. Compounding
the language barrier is a relative lack of Chinese knowledge regarding Latin America. Apart from major governmental
institutessuch as the China Academy of Social Sciences, which currently has the world's largest Latin America studies programand truly multinational Chinese corporationssuch as Hong Kongbased Hutchison Whampoa, China Shipping, China Overseas Shipping, Huawei, and ZTEthe
general knowledge of the region among Chinese businesspeople and government functionaries is limited, restricting the ability of the PRC to develop broad and sophisticated programs to advance its objectives in the region. Perhaps most importantly, despite the best efforts of Chinese businesspeople and politicians to reach out to Latin America, they are too frequently perceived as "not one of us"a reality reflected even in Chinese communities, which often remain only partly integrated, despite deep historical roots in many Latin American cities such as Lima and Guayaquil. Such distance often translates into a persistent mistrust , even where both sides perceive benefits from cooperation. Latin American businesspeople commonly express misgivings, suggesting that the Chinese are aggressive and manipulative in business dealings, or conceal hidden agendas behind their expressions of friendship and goodwill. Chinese companies in Latin America are often seen as poor corporate citizens, reserving the best jobs and subcontracts for their own nationals, treating workers harshly,
and maintaining poor relations with the local community. In the arena of ChinaLatin America military exchanges, it is interesting to note that Latin American military officers participating in such programs are often jokingly stigmatized by their colleagues in ways that officers participating in exchange programs in the United States are not. Finally, Chinese
influence is diluted by increasing interactions between Latin America and other extraregional actors , such as India, Russia, Iran, and others. Although the PRC is arguably the most significant new suitor of the region, it is not the only alternative . For Nicaragua and populist regimes in the Andean region, Russia provides important alternatives with respect to arms purchases and energy sector investments. An $18 billion commitment by a Russian consortium to develop the Junin-6 oilfield
in Orinoco, for example, may have helped to accelerate China's subsequent commitment to invest $16.3 billion in Junin-4. In addition to Russia,
India is increasingly engaging in commercial opportunities, particularly in high technology , services, and
commodity sector investments, while challenging the PRC monopoly over "south-south" developing country partnerships in the region.
When China cut off purchases of Argentine soy oil, for example, it was India that picked up the slack .
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Chinese Influence Bad

Chinese influence in Latin America is bad US economic engagement is comparatively superior
Shaiken et al 13
However, closer
ties to China also have signifi-cant disadvantages for both Latin America and the United States: Growing trade deficits. Latin American lead-ers who sign trade and investment deals with the PRC have noticed that China's exports are more affordable than their own goods, which contributes to trade deficits. Chinese goods are made by laborers who work for one-third of the wages of Latin American counterparts and who tolerate worse working conditions. Officials in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico have signaled their
unease about trade with such a hot com-petitor. In September 2005, Mexican President Vicente Fox made it clear to visiting President Hu Jintao that dumping electronics and cloth-ing was unacceptable. For
every dollar that Mexico makes from exports to China, the PRC makes $31 from exports to Mexico.[9] Disinterest in economic reform. Some ana-lysts believe that the commodities-based trade model used by China will undermine the progress that Latin America has made toward industrialization. While countries like Chile and Brazil have moved beyond raw materials exports, others with powerful presidents or rul-ing oligarchies may be tempted to fall back on plantation economics. Income gaps between the rich and poor may widen as a result. More-over, such narrowly focused economies are vul-nerable to downturns in commodity prices. Some 44 percent of Latin Americans already live below the poverty line. If these countries fail to adopt reforms, social inequality and political instability could depress U.S. exports to the region and increase migration problems. Scramble for resources. To obtain commodi-ties, China offers tempting investments in infra-structure. In contrast, the United States cannot offer direct tie-ins to state industries and can only offer development aid, now in decreasing amounts. Chinese competition may make Mil-lennium Challenge Account (MCA) money a less effective incentive to democratize govern-ments and liberalize markets. The one-to-two year lead time from proposal to disbursement of MCA aid gives volatile governments a chance to back away from marketoriented perfor-mance requirements. Evasion of American-style bottleneck diplo-macy. China's flexibility counters more rigid U.S. approaches. Obtaining any kind of assistance from the United States requires compliance on a battery of restrictions, including observing human rights, protecting the environment, prom-ising not to send U.S. military personnel to the International Criminal Court (ICC),[10] not assist-ing current or former terrorists, and not using U.S.-provided equipment for any other than its stated purpose. American commitments also depend on legislative approval and can be reversed if the mood in the U.S. Congress shifts. Prying eyes on America. From electronic espi-onage facilities in Cuba to port facilities run by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-Shing's Hutchi-son-Whampoa conglomerate in Panama, China has an eye trained on the United States. U.S. intelligence agencies are aware of this, but Washington's penchant for focusing on one threat at a time, such as the war on terrorism, could leave America vulnerable to Chinese industrial and military espionage .

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CHINA SOI DA NAUDL

CHINA SOI DA NAUDL

CHINA SOI DA NAUDL

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open more room for Mexico to adjust to a

CHINA SOI DA NAUDL

CHINA SOI DA NAUDL

CHINA SOI DA NAUDL

Increased China-Mexico economic engagement now

is looking to expand trade and investment with

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Chinese Influence High

*Fernando. The East is rising, in Latin America 5/10/13 http://www.thecommentator.com/article/3488/the_east_is_rising_in_latin_america]

Chinas pursuing increased influence in Latin America

Chinese influence in Latin American trades high now

CHINA SOI DA NAUDL

Its high and growing

Overseas Shipping, and Hutchison Whampoa play increasingly vital roles

in Latin America's foreign trade.

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Chinas outpacing US engagement

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decades, Latin America has heard a

Recent attempts at engagement have failed

with it. As many as 59

compared to just 14 percent considering it a good partner. This

it can no longer be so easily argued that the situation

is escalating out of control.

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number of obstacles to growth must be addressed if the bilateral relationship is to

More evidence instances of increased cooperation are meaningless

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Link: Economic Engagement

An economic approach to relations draws Mexico closer to the US

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Link: North American Competitiveness

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Link: Border Infrastructure

Binational infrastructure building is crucial for economic integration

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Enhanced border infrastructure is critical to the North American competitiveness

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Link: Access Roads

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Link: Security Cooperation

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Link: Immigration / Trade

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The economic component of the alliance is comparatively most important

Economic cooperation is the new orientation of the alliance

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The focus for the bilateral agenda is shifting to economics

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Ext. Internal Link

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Economic engagement pushes out China

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