China in Latin America: cooperation and hegemony?

Over the last decade, China has deeply affected the economic map of Latin America. All the Latin American countries quickly increased their exchanges with China and get engaged in new plans for exchanges, cooperation and partnerships. These evolutions have highlighted the American lack of leadership and the European loss of competitiveness. Numbers of researches tend to analyse the Sino-Latin American relationship with the eyes of reciprocity. This contribution rather makes the choice of analysing China’s strategy for growth on the world stage, focusing on its ties with Latin America and Brazil especially: cooperation or hegemony? According to this approach, the increase of China’s influence doesn’t only depend on its resources, nor on its capacity to mobilize them opportunely. It also depends on its external recognition. Thus, the power of China can be measured through its capacity to “assert itself as a reference” for its emerging peers, or even for Western powers. By integrating all dimensions of the Chinese power through its foreign policy and its incantatory diplomacy (anti-hegemonism, world multipolarization, South-South cooperation, etc.) , this chapter will try to identify real Chinese influence by measuring the distance between perception and reality. Against the backdrop of the following hypothesis: does the Chinese penetration in Latin America have a notable impact on the relations of Europe and the United States with this part of the world?