The Expansion of China's Global Hegemonic Strategy: Implications for Latin America

Abstract

The paper aims to provide a historical context for understanding the transition of China's development strategies from the "keeping a low profile" approach (Chinese: Tao Guang Yang Hui) during the past three decades to the current "striving for achievement" approach (Chinese: You Suo Zuo Wei) in recent years. The former lays a foundation for China's peaceful environment and economic success, while the latter represents a shift toward a more proactive foreign policy. The paper examines the two strategies from historical, regional and global perspectives and analyses the motivation behind China's current strategic repositioning. The author proposes an analytical lens of combining both Neo-Gramscian IR theory and the world system theory in order to comprehend the nexus between the accumulation and consolidation of China’s internal hegemony and its inevitable outward expansion. What are the implications of China's outward expansion of its global strategy? The author argues that Beijing's capital and hegemonic outward expansion represents a world system’s new round of capital and production relocation, which will dialectically enlarge or reduce "room for maneuver" and increase or decrease "upward mobility" for developing regions including Latin America. The paper concludes that it is in the political and economic interest of Latin America to seize the chance of this external "promotion by invitation" and to increase its upward mobility by finding the strategic convergence with China's global strategy.