You can't stop them, you can only hope to contain them

Tim Rogers (@nicadispatch), Manuel Rueda (@ruedareport), Kevin Gray (@kevinmgray15), and Jared Goyette (@JaredGoyette) take a look at the increasingly controversial investments of China in Latin America with As Chinese Push into Latin America, Nicaraguans Try to Hold the Line for Fusion.

Their report centers upon efforts by Nicaraguans to defend their land against the Ortega government and its Chinese partners to build the region's second interoceanic canal. The canal is unpopular because of its potential environmental and social effects as well as the mysteries surrounding everything about it.

Today, Dec. 10, the residents of Obrajuelo will join thousands of other mostly impoverished Nicaraguans in a nationwide march on Managua to protest the mysterious canal project, which will be built, owned and operated by an enigmatic Chinese billionaire who has only visited Nicaragua three times and still can’t pronounce its name. With groundbreaking only two weeks away, nobody outside a secretive Sandinista-Chinese cabal knows who is paying for the project, how much it will cost, or what the environmental impact will be.

It's a good story that brings attention to China's growing economic interest in the region. However, I am left wondering about the answer to several questions.

While China has been increasing its investments in Latin America for the last several years, it has been doing the same elsewhere in the world, no? Is there something special about China's operations in Latin America?

According to Margaret Myers, the Inter-American Dialogue’s program director for China and Latin America, China's multinationals are no more abusive than any other country's multinationals. Given what I read a few years ago, China had a pretty poor record with its investments in Africa and the Middle East. Have they changed their business practices? Is the difference why they have a better reputation in the Americas (if true) driven by the industries that they are investing in versus those that they invest in in Africa and other parts of the world? Are Chinese business practices in the Americas better because the governments of Latin America require them to be? Chinese involvement in the region isn't at the top of my agenda so maybe these answers are commonly known.

The remainder of the article looks at some of the local push back against Chinese investments in Peru, Ecuador, and, to a much lesser extent in Venezuela (also could have included Costa Rica).