One Belt One Road Initiative and Its Implications for Latin America

Abstract

China has consolidated itself as a powerful economic and geopolitical entity in the 21st century. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is the biggest infrastructure project that could potentially launch China to the top of the world’s economy. The BRI not only aims to increase the economic reach of China around the globe but to consolidate its growing political influence within those states that form part of it. Latin America, although a region that does not play an important role in world economics, could be one of the strategic zones within the BRI. As such, twenty countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) have already joined the initiative, which has also excluded the United States of America (U.S.) as a measured counterweight to the influence it possesses. Some countries in the LAC region view the BRI as an opportunity to unshackle themselves from the ever-growing constraints that the USA places on them and at the same time, establish a stronger bond with the country that could one day become the largest economy in the world.