The Reversal of the Structural Transformation in Latin America after China’s Emergence
“The Reversal of the Structural Transformation in Latin America after China’s Emergence,” (with Mauricio Cardenas), Brookings Institution Policy Paper, June (2013).
Posted: 17 Sep 2019
Date Written: August 2, 2011
Abstract
Starting in the 1980s, China’s economic growth has been characterized by a rapid acceleration. Even though the Asian financial crisis caused China’s growth to decelerate somewhat, the very high growth rates that picked up again in 2000 have more than doubled per-capita income and total GDP in just a decade.Since the 1990s, but especially during the 2000s, China’s volume and diversity of imports from across the world began to rapidly increase. It was after 2000, however, that the value of imports more than tripled in all sectors including mineral fuels. Moreover, while China’s growth spilled over to Asia, Europe and North America since the 1990s, it was until the 2000s that Latin America and Africa also experienced increased demand from China. Regardless of the reasons behind the rise in Chinese imports from Latin America, the significant expansion in the demand for commodities during the last decade has been a mixed blessing for Latin America. On the one hand, it has brought a unique trade opportunity, which Latin America and other regions have benefited from. On the other hand, the pattern of specialization and appreciation of the currencies has reversed the process of industrialization in Latin America and encouraged the expansion of non-tradable sectors, at a cost in terms of output per worker. Within Latin America there has been a sharp divide: some countries have been left-out of the expansion of exports to China, while almost all have experienced the effects of greater manufacturing imports from China.
Keywords: Structural transformation, Latin America, China
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