Adrian H. Hearn

Harnessing the Dragon: Overseas Chinese Entrepreneurs in Mexico and Cuba

Chinese communities resident in Mexico and Cuba face a common problem: their dealings with business partners in China are perceived as a threat to national interests. In Mexico this concern emanates from manufacturers unable to compete with Chinese imports, and is evident in antagonistic news media and acts of hostility against Chinese businesses. In Cuba it stems from the states stewardship over economic sovereignty, and is evident in efforts to assimilate Havanas Chinatown and its entrenched informal sector into a centralized scheme of commercial regulation. Interviews with policy makers, local officials and Chinese entrepreneurs indicate that the “rationalization” of Chinese ethnic allegiances for the greater public good is a critical step towards alleviating tensions. I conclude that both countries can leverage benefits from overseas Chinese communities, but to do so they must support their entrepreneurial activities, harness their networks to promote targeted imports and exports, and develop more culturally sensitive regulations.

China and Cuba 160 Years and Looking Ahead

Sino-Cuban relations have deepened rapidly since the beginning of the twenty-first century, propelled by both political ideology and economic interests. A shared commitment to socialism with “local characteristics” has enabled the pursuit of an unusually broad range of cooperative initiatives. These include Chinese investment in the Cuban nickel and oil sectors, educational and medical exchange programs, the development of tourism, and engagement with the Chinese diaspora on the island. Data from Chinese sources on these spheres of engagement reflect an attempt to address contemporary needs with a blend of state and market forces. The intensification of Sino-Cuban relations over the past decade poses no challenge to the United States; on the contrary, it opens new opportunities for trilateral cooperation. Las relaciones sino-cubanos se han profundizado rápidamente desde comienzos del siglo XXI, impulsadas tanto por ideología política como por intereses económicos. Un compromiso compartido al socialismo con “características locales” ha permitido la consecución de una gama inusualmente amplia de iniciativas cooperativas. Éstas incluyen la inversión china en sectores cubanos de níquel y petróleo, programas de intercambio educacionales y médicos, el fomento de turismo, y la interacción con la diáspora china en la isla. Datos de fuentes chinas sobre estos ámbitos de interacción reflejan un intento de abordar necesidades contemporáneas con una mezcla de fuerzas estatales y del mercado. La profundización de relaciones sino-cubanas en recientes décadas no presenta ningún desafío a los Estados Unidos; al contrario, abre nuevas oportunidades de cooperación trilateral.

Mexico, China, and the Politics of Trust

Described by political scientists as a necessary condition for efficiency, productivity, and prosperity, trust has become a precept of good governance with global reach. The concept is often marshaled to support a conservative political agenda of state retrenchment and market deregulation. Proponents of this agenda argue that the natural inclination of private actors to trust and cooperate with each other is undermined by government monitoring and compliance regulations. The evidence from Mexico points to an alternative conclusion: when carefully targeted, state support to private actors has strengthened rather than impeded trusting relationships between suppliers, customers, and investors. Commercial competition with China raises an urgent challenge for Mexico’s government: to broaden the scope of its assistance beyond a narrow set of elite firms to small and medium-sized enterprises, including those of the resident Chinese community.Considerado por politologos como condicion necesaria para la eficiencia...

Innovation in an expanding market: Australian pork is not a commodity

The growing Asian middle class, the proliferation of export markets and a more discerning domestic consumer base are creating new opportunities and challenges for the Australian pork industry. To fully capitalise on these opportunities and face these new challenges, the right questions need to be asked by the Australian pork industry. We need to know not only what our consumers want, but who our consumers are. The present paper aims to demonstrate that novel approaches to investigate consumer attitudes will be required, and it cannot be assumed that current productions systems, products and marketing strategies are optimal for the changing environment and the creation of new premium market opportunities. With new markets and new products come new consumers; identifying who those consumers are, the networks they operate within as food consumers, and what influences their purchasing decisions are the key to their adopting Australian pork as premium produce in a new global market.

The Changing Dynamics of China-Latin America Agriculture Relations

With only 9 percent of the world’s arable land and a diminishing base of agricultural labor, China is exploring new strategies for producing and importing high-protein urban staples. Acquisition of foreign agriculture products is therefore important to the viability of the Chinese government’s vision of national economic development. The chapter examines questions and concerns that have become pertinent to China’s agriculture relations with Latin America: What domestic pressures are driving the Chinese government to deepen trade and investment with the region? How can China formulate reliable South-South relationships that offer partner countries more equitable outcomes than previous colonial and postcolonial experiences? How do Latin American suspicions of Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) reinforce perceptions of imperiled national sovereignty? We find that the Chinese government has become acutely aware of the need to address Latin American concerns about its impact in the agriculture sector. To do so, it is taking measures ranging from approvals for a wider range of Latin American food imports to commitments to invest in value-adding sectors of the region’s agriculture production chains.

Cuba and China: Governance and Industrial Collaboration

Abstract Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the Cuban government has sought to diversify its foreign economic partnerships. Cooperation with China has emerged as a critical avenue of trade and investment in conventional sectors like nickel and tourism, but also in more innovative operations like the domestic assembly of vehicles and electronic consumer goods. Designed and implemented through governmental channels rather than the private sector, these initiatives reflect unconventionally long-term economic goals and a broadly conceived plan of inter-industry coordination. While collaboration with China has improved certain aspects of daily life in Cuba such as access to public transport and electrodomestic products, critics argue that neither country, whether independently or in league, sufficiently exercises good governance and transparency in political and economic affairs. Drawing on data gathered during three years of research in Cuba and one year in China, the article suggests that international advocates of good governance face two challenges: first, to reduce local suspicions that their efforts are politically self-serving, and second, to develop conceptions of governance and transparency that are nuanced enough to accommodate the unconventional characteristics of Sino-Cuban collaboration.

China's Social Engagement Programs in Latin America

It is well known that Latin America has become a crucial source of oil, copper, coal, steel, grain, and other resources for China, as well as an important market for Chinese manufactured exports. Less well understood are the social engagement programs developed by the Chinese government to foment goodwill and favourable conditions for long-term cooperation with the region. The article explores Latin American reactions to Chinas growing influence, and how business networking, educational exchange, and technical training schemes have supported commercial relations. Drawing on case studies from Mexico, Cuba, and Venezuela, it argues that Chinas broadly conceived approach to cooperation has served to establish trust and stable economic exchange with partners across the political spectrum.

An East Asian Model for Latin American Success: The New Path

In Building the International Criminal Court, Oberlin College Professor of Politics Benjamin N. Schiff presents a highly readable and perceptive analysis. The International Criminal Court (ICC) began its work on 1 July 2002, as the first permanent international criminal court in history. In his stocktaking, Schiff demonstrates a particular knack of amalgamating all the political and juridical dimensions that challenge this unparalleled institution. The study conveys a vivid sense of the ICC as ‘work-in-progress’, a battlefield of differing ‘normative commitments, legal understandings, political interests, diplomatic bargains and organization dynamics’ (p. 3). However, despite all its legal dilemmas and its political fragility, Schiff also shows how the ICC has already managed to develop a sustainable modus operandi. Thus his indepth case studies and interviews allow for a positive interpretation: the ICC has made a first step towards becoming a working global institution. This conclusion is embedded in detailed investigations concerning the origin, architecture, and policy of the ICC. Schiff generally takes the constitution of the Court to be the result of an historic current of norms intended to prosecute heinous crimes and end impunity through transnational jurisdiction (Chapter 1). More specifically, he presents the ICC Statute as the direct consequence of former experiences with tribunals dealing with crimes against humanity, such as the Nuremberg trials, or genocide, like the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (Chapters 2 and 3). In order to evaluate the organisational structure of the ICC, Schiff analyses its first operations in considerable detail (Chapter 4). He then focuses on its policy by examining the influence of NGOs (Chapter 5) and the relations between the Court and its member states (Chapter 6). Finally he delves deeper into the Court’s role-finding process by scrutinising the four ‘situations’ in which the ICC was engaged by mid-2007. Taken together, Schiff’s analyses culminate in four dilemmas, each of which tends to obstruct the ICC’s work from the beginning, but each of which has proved to be negotiable in practice. First, the allocation of competences and procedures within the ICC has turned out to be unclear, which has led to considerable internal tensions. In the cases of Sudan and the Central Republic of Africa, questions of authority between the Chief Prosecutor and the Pre-Trial-Chamber have contributed to delays in the proceedings. However, these early experiences with the ICC’s unprecedented architecture have already intensified efforts to attune its organs to its overall task. Second, the ICC seems to be trapped in the dilemma of having to choose between judicial neutrality and political partiality. Since its prosecution depends on the co-operation of the state in question, the ICC is vulnerable to instrumentalisation by particular political parties, as was the case in Uganda and Sudan. These difficulties experienced by the young institution do not, however, disqualify its work as such. They lead us instead to rethink its role as a freestanding judicial court. The lesson to be learned is that the ICC must consider itself a political player, an institution which has to balance neutrality against prosecution interests. Third, Schiff addresses the dilemma that the ICC attracts neither the support of the only superpower (USA) nor that of other big players (such as China or Russia). In light of this, the ICC faces serious problems, ranging from doubts about its legitimacy to its impotence to actually enforce sanctions. The only way out of this dilemma would be a close collaboration between the UN and the ICC, such as in fact took place in the Security Council’s referral of the Sudan situation to the ICC in 2005. As Schiff points out, this co-operation even ‘demonstrated limits