 future where you can share your burning questions or any other questions that come up during the discussion. So welcome again everyone my name is Lauren and I'm the assistant for the China is not our enemy campaign. The goal of this campaign is to counter and stop the US's aggression on China through a love for humanity and dedication to mutual respect cooperation and world peace. First of all I would like to thank our post sponsoring organizations without whom this work would not be possible and events like these would not be possible. So a very grateful thank you to No Cold War, the People's Forum NYC, Chow Collective, Pivot to Peace, Massachusetts Peace Action, and Veterans for Peace, the China Working Group. Thank you also to our amazing Latin America team at CodePink for helping this collaboration come to fruition. Secondly I would like to let everyone in the audience know about the China is not our enemy campaign's latest action. You can go to codepink.org backslash innovation to use the one-click politics feature to email or tweet at your Congress member. War is not innovation. Demand that Congress keep militarism and xenophobia out of make it in America, formally known as the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act and the America competes act. The America competes act passed earlier this month in the house and now a special conference committee is reconciling the differences between the two bills to get a final version to the president to sign. So we want them to remove the military funding and China provisions before it gets to President Biden's desk. The U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, which is the Senate's version passed last June, allocates $500 million for media coverage critical of China. Specifically mentioned in the bill is media that criticizes China's Belt and Road initiative. Again, go to codepink.org slash innovation to use the feature and let your Congress people know that war is not innovation. All right. Now let me introduce our wonderful guest speakers. Our first speaker is Carlos Martinez, who is an author and researcher based in London, Britain. He is co-editor of Friends of Socialist China and co-founder of No Cold War. His first book, The End of the Beginning, Lessons of the Soviet Collapse, was published by Leftward in 2019. You can use the, you can see the links to Carlos's Twitter and websites for No Cold War and Friends of Socialist China in the chat so you can follow Carlos's work. Our second guest is Manolo De Los Santos. Manolo is the co-executive director of the People's Form NYC and a popular educator and organizer from the Caribbean. Before joining the People's Form, he organized solidarity and education programs in Latin America. You can find the links to Manolo's Twitter and the website for the People's Form NYC in the chat. Now that we're all better acquainted, let's jump into the topic for today. China's Belt and Road initiative. What is the Belt and Road initiative? People may have heard the name in passing or seen it in news headlines but not really understood what it entails. Can Carlos or Manolo, can you give more context as to what exactly the Belt and Road initiative is? Go ahead, Carlos. Yeah, I'm happy to have a first stab. Yeah, essentially it's like a global development strategy that seeks to promote economic integration and cooperation basically via an enormous network of infrastructure. So roads, railways, bridges, factories, ports, telecom systems, energy transmission systems, renewable energy infrastructure and so on. It was originally referred to as the New Silk Road because the vision was based on the Silk Road, this ancient trading network that connected China with Southeast Asia, Central Asia, Europe, Africa, the Middle East. But now it's kind of expanded in scope such that it essentially includes the whole world. I mean there's 200-ish countries in the world and of those 140 or so are signed up to the Belt and Road and the vast majority of them developing countries. So yeah, the elevator pitch is that it identifies a need for infrastructure and matches that need with financial institutions that are able to invest and with companies that have got the expertise and the capacity to plan and to carry out the work. So it's about industrialization, it's about economic upgrade and it's also about connectivity and just to use a slightly controversial word, it's about globalization in a sense. And on the left we tend to use that word globalization in a somewhat negative way into it's kind of a synonym, the way we use it with imperialism. But in terms of increasing the connectedness of the world, bringing people together, learning from one another, trading with one another on the basis of equality, on the basis of mutual respect, that's what globalization could mean, that's what globalization should mean. And I think you can contextualize the Belt and Road Initiative within this framework of a new type of globalization. So fantastic. So there's a lot of misinformation in the West about the Belt and Road Initiative. Can either Carlos or Manolo tell us what exactly does the Belt and Road Initiative do for Latin American countries? Why do they want to join? Well, I think one of the most important things to always start is with the reality of Latin America itself. It's a continent that on one hand, particularly in the last few years, due to constant US government intervention, has seen a sharp increase in the rates of poverty and extreme poverty. Only in 2020 it was estimated that at least 35% of the Latin American population, I'm talking about at least 215 million people, were living in conditions of poverty on the continent, which is accompanied by my nutrition, hunger, lack of access to education, lack of access to decent public transportation, lack of access to housing, and many basic services that in many other parts of the world, we would assume are necessary for any human being to live with dignity. This is a continent that despite having quite large trade relations with the United States and with Europe continues to live in this poverty. Then comes China in 2013 and says, we are proposing a third world development plan, because that's what the BRI is. It's a plan envisaged or built and constructed out of the third world that proposes third world solutions to third world problems without ever sacrificing the integrity, the sovereignty, or the independence of the nations involved. Many people who are in favor sometimes say that the Belt and Road Initiative is not political or is not ideological. It is very ideological and it's very political because it precisely out of China's view that if we want to actually live in a world of equals, if we want to actually have equal relations between nations and move towards a multipolar world, which is now a common word being used heavily in our context today, then it actually requires equal development opportunities for the third world. So when you go to Latin America, a diverse continent, it's not a monolithic continent. We have many political differences in our continent. You will see that across the board there is generally an appreciation of what the investment brought by the Belt and Road Initiative is because in all cases, it has sought to end poverty in our own context. It has sought to elevate each country's ability to take care of its own needs and not depend on others because what Latin Americans have seen for, I would say, over 100 years of being solely dependent on US trade is that we were essentially being turned into consumers. Of US merchandise and goods. Despite being a completely rich continent, we were forced to buy American, to think American, to dress American. No one ever called that imperialism or colonization, but we were forced into this habit. China for the first time with the Belt and Road Initiative essentially opens the path for us to begin to see ourselves as an independent continent, not disconnected from the rest of the world, but able to join the rest of the world on our own terms. Can I come in on that as well? Yes, please. Yeah, I think it's worth pointing out that of all of the countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, currently around two thirds have signed up to the Belt and Road. So it must be offering something. You know, I guess the right-wing press and politicians attacked the Belt and Road and attacked this China-Latin America relationship kind of on the basis of a double racism, right? On the one hand, you've got the Chinese and they're cunning and they're inscrutable and they're these fume and true characters that basically are intent on world domination. And then on the other side, you've got these kind of backward Latin Americans and they're corrupt and they're very easily duped and so on. For our purposes, you know, we can probably avoid the racist tropes and consider what these countries might actually be getting out of the Belt and Road, which I think Manolo has spoken to very eloquently. You know, in most of the countries in the region, there is this massive infrastructure gap and there is an enduring underdevelopment, which is the legacy of the whole history of the continent since colonization. You know, I mentioned earlier about globalization. Latin America has been at the core of a very different type of globalization since 1492, right? Since the Europeans showed up, killed or enslaved the indigenous population, stole the land, stole the resources. And so the region was integrated into an imperialist globalization, a colonialist globalization, which was designed very specifically to serve the needs of the global north, right? Of Europe, of North America, supplying land, supplying resources, supplying labor, supplying markets. So the Belt and Road and more broadly integrating into a more equal, a more multipolar global economy is about breaking out of underdevelopment, right? You know, signing up to the Belt and Road essentially means signing up to a package of infrastructure development, investment in projects that are designed to upgrade a country's economy. And in that world, China is unquestionably the world leader. You know, if you look at China's progress, particularly in the last two to three decades in terms of building railways, roads, high speed rail, energy networks, clean energy and so on, it's startling, right? Something like 90% of the high speed rail in the world is in China. Now, I'm in Britain, you guys are in the US. I think between us, we're responsible for approximately 0% of the world's high speed rail. So for developing companies looking to upgrade their economies to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels, to improve living standards, high speed rail and these other technologies are really important. And part of the Belt and Road is really sharing China's experience in all of this. And, you know, aside from providing the capital and the technology, China's just, it's a very relevant example specifically for the developing world, right? China's journey out of underdevelopment has been one of the most remarkable economic phenomena in history, right? To go from being one of the poorest countries in the world at the time of the of the Revolution in 1949 to becoming today a science and technology powerhouse country of 1.4 billion people that's able to reliably provide those people with food, housing, clothing, education, healthcare. You know, if there's something to learn for other developing countries, it's definitely worth learning. So, you know, there are a number of pretty clear benefits to Latin American and Caribbean countries of joining up with the Belt and Road, and they can be summed up as development. And a very important element of that that I hope we'll get into later is the idea of environmentally sustainable development, which is something that requires, you know, a long-term investment, long-term strategy, and is another area that China is very much at the forefront of. Fantastic. Thank you for that very thoughtful answer. And, you know, speaking of underdevelopment, can either of you contrast the IMF loans and the Washington consensus, what they've done in Latin America, to the Belt and Road initiatives and China's relations with the region? Well, it's important to talk about the Washington consensus, not just in terms of the financial or economic structures or elements that are tied to it. For most Latin Americans, it's very marked in our memory that the period tied to the Washington consensus also came tied to military coups financed and supported and organized by the United States government. It was a period of invasions. It was a period of dictatorships, military dictatorships, that in places like Argentina meant the disappearance of over 30,000 people who simply thought different. It meant in places like Chile, secret torture prisons built under the advice of U.S. military officials. It meant in many parts of the region a very difficult period in our history. And the Washington consensus, in a sense, came about as a period of both the complete process of rebating and attacks against the left in the region and continents, but a complete submission of the peoples of our continent through economic projects that ultimately privatize and sold all or most of our public resources and goods in order to serve the interests of the United States government. What many people now like to talk about neoliberalism or the project of neoliberalism was born in blood in Latin America. We were the experimental site where for decades, for decades, everything or anything that in any period in our country served as an indicator for going against poverty or providing basic human services and goods were being completely destroyed under the direct advice of the U.S. government. In fact, it's a painful history that marks us till this day, which is why the contrast becomes what does it look like to receive, I wouldn't call it aid, but what does it look like to receive or be in an economic relationship with another partner country where political conditions aren't imposed as to what your own political system, economic system should be. And I think this is important because, again, I don't like to say that the Belt and Road Initiative or the Chinese are not ideological or political. There is a politics behind it, but it's not the politics that seeks uniformity in its relations. The fact that two-thirds of the countries in Latin America relate or members of the Belt and Road Initiative is particular because you have everything from governments that I hate and abhor, like the government of Colombia, who has incredibly strong relations with China and engages in massive trade and is a big part of the Belt and Road Initiative. In fact, the construction of many of the major ports now in Colombia is being done with major financing from China and the Belt and Road Initiative. And Colombia is one of the countries that's most renegotiating its debt with China in large numbers. I think the last number, I think they've renegotiated in the middle of the pandemic. Because of the pandemic, they renegotiated over $400 million in debt with China, which would have been impossible to renegotiate if the creditor had been the US or the IMF or the World Bank. The fact that China relates to Cuba is another particularity. You have the whole spectrum of politics in Latin America covered in the Belt and Road Initiative. The biggest contract is also that the IMF and World Bank in their consistent history in Latin America have always come in with loans that require that Latin Americans invest less in education, that we invest less in health care, that we invest less in the needs of the common people. In fact, it's been the requirement to this day, for example, as Argentina right now is trying to renegotiate its debt with the IMF and the World Bank. What are the impositions that even a progressive government like the one in Argentina has to fight against? When the IMF continues to go back to the table with what cuts are you going to make? Belt and Road Initiative comes in with the opposite. Belt and Road Initiative says if you want to think about long-term development, you have to build infrastructure and not just infrastructure of building little roads or building pipelines. A lot of the capital investment actually goes into things like education. I just recently had the pleasure of meeting a series of a group of congressmen from different countries in the Caribbean who were speaking about how much of the investment through Belt and Road was coming into basically rebuild and actually update the teaching of sciences and technology in public universities in the region. That is a long-term investment and we have to acknowledge that not everything that comes out of China is positive. There are many of the trade relations that China brings to the continent that are not always fair, that are not always transparent, that are not always the best for our countries either. I don't want to paint an illusion either, but there is a huge difference even in those relations between the ultimate goal of wanting to build a win-win style of development versus the U.S.'s total or none policy. Either total profit and gains for the U.S. and their friends or nothing at all. Ultimately, Latin Americans are deciding for themselves what is best and the reality is that the U.S. is clear, which is why they increased their propaganda campaign in the region, that more and more we are finding that China is the better reliable partner for our needs. Yeah, just to pick up on the economics thread there, the IMF, what the World Bank have very consistently done with their loans in Latin America and in Africa is to impose conditions which is based on their preferred economic model. Sometimes it is called the Washington consensus, as we have been referring to. Sometimes it is called neoliberalism. The details vary a little bit, but the essence is pretty predictable. It means liberalization of foreign trade, so removing any kind of protective barriers that countries might have in place to protect their domestic industries. It means privatization, opening up bigger and bigger parts of the economy to private ownership and management. Most notoriously, in a number of African countries, that's included literally privatizing the water supply and turning it into a profit-making concern. You even have people like Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty, who said that this type of economics is a violation of human rights in sub-Saharan Africa in a situation of relative water scarcity to place ownership and management of the water supply in private hands. And the other aspect of the Washington consensus is the reduced role for the state, the reduced role for the government, which is a very ideological thing. It's a kind of recognition that governments have some level of accountability. They've got to in some way be responsive to their populations. And in the case of a lot of countries in Africa and in Latin America, you're talking about governments that have emerged from liberation movements, and that actually do have some relationship with and sense of responsibility towards the masses. So the effect of imposing these kind of neoliberal policies, the effect of imposing deregulation is to shift the balance of power in favor of the privateers, in favor of multinational corporations that are lining up to get a piece of the action. Now, you compare that with China and you compare that with the Belt and Road Initiative. I agree with Manolo in his point that it's not all kind of honey and roses, but China doesn't use loan conditionality. And that's the fundamental economic difference between the US and China's approach, right? The US tries to enforce its economic model as a proxy for imposing its dominance, its hegemony. China's very explicit that different countries have different needs, different conditions, and it's up to them to choose a development model that suits them. That's what multi-polarity is all about. And you've probably seen a book called The China Triangle by this US academic Kevin Gallagher about China-Latin American relations. And he points out that this way of doing business, China's model with Latin America is very much in line with its general foreign policy of non-intervention, non-interference, which it goes back to the 1950s. It goes back to Bandung in 1955. It goes to Zhou Enlai and the formation of the non-aligned movement. And China's hewed pretty close to that policy over the course of 70 years. The other thing, and Manola's touched on this, but the other thing about the Washington consensus is it's not just economics. It's economics backed up with guns, with coercion. As we've talked about looking back at these last 70 years, you've seen direct or indirect US involvement in regime change operations in Guatemala, Brazil, Chile, Nicaragua, Panama, most recently in Bolivia. It was involved in the coup attempt in Venezuela in 2002. It's maintained a crippling embargo on Cuba for six decades. So alongside neoliberalism and proceeding neoliberalism, you've got imperialism, which is another crucially important difference between the US and China. China's waged no wars in Latin America. China's carried out no coups in Latin America, imposed no sanctions, conducted no destabilization campaigns, set up no military bases. This is a non-trivial point that we should take into consideration when we're comparing the behavior of the US and China in relation to Latin America and the Caribbean. That was great. It seems like China is offering an alternative at last to the US and the IMF and World Bank. The Washington Consensus and IMF are a neoliberal project. How would you characterize the Belt and Road Initiative? I would say that the Belt and Road Initiative is a development project for independence. That's how it characterized it. Does it still function within the confines of capitalism, of global capitalism? Yes. That's the world we're living in. Does it subvert the things we hate about capitalism? Not exactly, not consistently, not systematically, but I think in the moment that we're living in history, the conjuncture we're living through, to even think of a different world in which many of our countries could actively think about ending poverty, liberating masses of people from the apartheid of healthcare inefficiencies, of hunger, of financial destitution. The Belt and Road Initiative is the best alternative we have. For those who identify with the left, who identify with progressive causes, I would like to always think about where will Cuba be today if it wouldn't be for the help of countries like China and the Belt and Road Initiative. You have a country like Cuba who has been attempting a socialist project 90 miles away from the United States government for decades now, for over six decades. Cuba has a challenge of how does it think about food sovereignty? How does it think about environmentally sound transportation? It has to think about the building of biotechnology and the expansion of biotechnology projects. It wouldn't be able to do any of these projects if it hadn't been, if it weren't for the continued support of projects like the Belt and Road Initiative, which allow it to not just connect to China, because I think this is the key element is that the Belt and Road Initiative is useful for Latin America, ultimately, in that it allows us to expand our own projects of economic integration in the region. It helps to better connect our region going from the Caribbean to the borders of Mexico to the United States, all the way down to Tierra del Puego in Argentina. This project of political, economic, and social integration is being helped by BRI. I would like to say, almost like we have to write that donkey as far as we can. We have something that for the first time is beneficial to us, so let us write the donkey. I mean, neoliberalism is a slightly misused word. Sometimes people use it a bit sloppily, a little bit carelessly, like putting an equal sign between neoliberalism and capitalism, or even putting an equal sign between neoliberalism and markets. You've got some people on the left who say, well, China from 1978 introduced market reforms. It's adopted neoliberal economic policy, but it's just completely incorrect. It's a mischaracterization, because neoliberalism means something relatively specific. It means adherence to neoclassical economics. It means a program of privatization, deregulation, de-unionization, getting the government out of the economy. If you had to sum it up in a single phrase, it's free market fundamentalism. It's allowing the maximum freedom for private companies and private individuals to make unfettered profits. That's the liberation in neoliberalism. It's freedom for capitalists. The neoliberal package is exactly what the West has offered Latin America and Africa and the Middle East for decades. Most notoriously would be the IMF structural adjustment programs that were imposed in Africa in the 1990s and 2000s. As we talked about, Chinese investment, Chinese loans don't come with that type of conditionality. No one's having to privatize their water supply in order to get access to Chinese financing. That's an important difference. The other thing is that the neoliberal model has tended to hold the global south in this position of a low level of development, very focused on using the global south to provide raw materials, primary commodities, and to keep it stuck at the very bottom of the value chain. Increasingly, BRI projects are about moving up the value chain and upgrading economies. That's quite a recent shift, actually, in terms of the relationship between China and Latin America and Caribbean. In the early 2000s, from 2003 to 2013, there was a commodity boom. Commodity prices were very high. China was buying lots of them. That's not a bad thing. A lot of Latin American countries did extremely well out of that, most notably Venezuela and Brazil. It paid for extensive social programs and redistributive packages in those countries. Venezuela in particular took billions and billions of dollars worth of oil-backed loans from China and used those to create social housing and create literacy programs and to put doctors in the porous barrios of Caracas for the first time. No complaints about that. But in recent years, over the last decade, there's been a shift away from energy resources and particularly from the extraction of fossil fuels towards industrial cooperation, diversified production, including green energy, smart manufacturing, telecoms, infrastructure, IT. Huawei has got nine data centers in Latin America, for example, and there's financial cooperation as well. Brazil, Argentina, Chile have joined the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. This is a very new development for a lot of countries in Latin America to have access to the latest technology, to have a path to upgrade their economies and to enter into this fast track of science and technology is, I would say, a historic development. Yeah, that's great news that these kinds of industries, education, science, technology are finally being attended to. It's really exciting. Argentina recently joined the Belt and Road Initiative. I know that they are trying to refinance their 44 billion debt to the IMF while accepting new credit from China. And as we mentioned before, Venezuela, Cuba, other countries are being heavily sanctioned by the US. How do these countries navigate new credit and existing debt with the IMF World Bank? I imagine this is a plight of other countries with different political landscapes. Do you have any thoughts on that? Well, I chuckle and laugh a little always when I see how the US reacts to any independent sovereign government in Latin America, even implying that it wants to have normal relations with China, that it wants to have normal trade relations with China. First, it makes large threats. And the President of Argentina was recently visiting China, meant with President Xi Jinping made a series of visits and agreements towards Argentina's national economic development. And immediately, I don't think his plane had even landed back in Buenos Aires. And multiple US officials were both critiquing, lambasting, attacking, and threatening the sovereign president, the democratically elected president of another country with all sorts of conditions if Argentina didn't step back from those commitments they had made in China. That is despicable. That is completely despicable. You know, the US today wants to talk about, particularly about territorial sovereignty and maintaining the independence of countries and how much it fights for the independence of other countries, but it respects very little the independence of Latin America. In fact, you know, Biden, who is very rarely lucid, said recently, you know, Latin America is no longer our backyard. It is our front yard. And maybe he's right in the sense that it's the yard now that they want to pay more attention to. They see it as a zone of conflict, of contradiction, of struggle over whose interests will be primary in the region, whose interests, whose plans, whose economic needs will be paid more attention to in the region. Will it be Latin America's needs or will it be the US's needs? And essentially the US government is willing to go out against any government, be it progressive, be it right wing, be it center right, whatever flavor of the month we have in Latin America when it comes to the political spectrum, the US is essentially willing to go against any of these governments willing to have relations with China, you know. And it's in a way sad, but at the same time, it's also been an interesting moment to see more and more governments, again, face with this dilemma, make I think very responsible choices, which is ultimately we have to do what is best for people. And because China is a good economic partner for many of these right wing governments, they also decide based on what is good for the pockets of our business class and our ruling class in our countries. This is a win-win project. This is a win-win project. And the fact that not one Chinese ship, not one Chinese ship has shown up in a Latin American port at the moment of having to sign an agreement is remarkable. Who is touring Latin Central America today? The head, Laura Richardson, head of the general, head of the Southern command of the United States military. She is in Honduras today. In case there was any rumbling that Honduras would break relations with Taiwan and fully recognize, finally recognize that there's one China. We know for a fact that this is part of the agenda being discussed in Honduras today between the general and the president, Xiomara, who's a progressive person, who's a leftist who actually already in her campaign indicated that there was an interest in developing and recognizing the one China policy of the PRC. And that Honduras would benefit greatly from having independent relations with China. Who shows up today? The general. Are those conversations ever friendly once? Does the US ever send the general just to say hello? So we really have to ask ourselves, laugh a little, but also be very concerned about how these things play out in our continent. I mean, it would be a pretty terrible thing if Honduras were to follow the US model and adopt the one China policy, as the US did in 1972 with the signing of the Shanghai Communique. But I do think we should probably, there should be some gratitude towards China that because of its involvement in the continent, Latin America has now been upgraded from backyard to front yard. This is historic. In terms of the specific problems that Argentina has now got to deal with, it's perfectly fair point to make that taking out loans is by its very nature somewhat risky. Loans mature and have to be paid back. Investments are capitalized and what happens if things don't work out as predicted. And ultimately, that's a matter for Argentina's politicians and economists to run their own affairs in a responsible way. And that's part of this whole dynamic that we've been talking about. China's not going to tell you how to take care of your business. Of course, Chinese banks, like any creditors, are going to do their due diligence and they're going to conduct feasibility studies and so on. And they're very much not into providing bad loans with no hope of repayment, except in the case of policy loans. And these are sort of very low interest and essentially form part of a program of foreign aid. So for example, China's written off lots of loans to low income countries, especially over the last couple of years during the pandemic. But Argentina is a middle income country, right? Argentina's per capita GDP is similar to China's. So Belt and Road investments aren't going to be in that sort of category. They're intended to generate profit and their reform of capital investment like any other. You invest capital with the expectation of reaping rewards in the future. And China's investing in Argentina's development as part of joint enterprise arrangements with the Argentinian state and Argentinian companies. And it will get a corresponding part of the rewards from that. It is, I would like to say, just in terms of the loan terms, a lot of academics have studied this in some detail and they've basically all agreed that Chinese loans typically have significantly lower interest rates than American lending institutions and the IMF and World Bank and much longer repayment periods in comparison with their counterparts in the Western financial institutions. And there's typically much more flexibility around debt and renegotiation, etc. And as we've been saying, in terms of government loans, the Chinese don't tell you what to spend money on. We've seen that in Venezuela, in Cuba, in Bolivia, Chinese loans have gone towards building schools, building social housing, building hospitals, towards genuinely improving people's lives and addressing the entrenched poverty and inequality that can be found throughout much of the continent. That's not what's happened with IMF loans. The IMF has Argentina in a debt trap. Debt trap is a phrase that I'm sure if you were to Google it, you would exclusively find articles about what China's doing in different countries of the world. The West invented the debt trap and uses it to this day. Argentina's President Alberto Fernández said very specifically, I am working to rid Argentina of its dependence on the IMF. So in a sense, this deepening of Argentina's economic links with China and with Russia and with other countries is exactly a recognition that the country is in a toxic relationship with the IMF, with the World Bank, with the international financial institutions that it needs to get out of. Argentina will hopefully come out of this process in a much healthier state with much lower debt repayments over a much longer period and with an upgraded economy that produces more value and that creates a better life for its people. China is finally offering an alternative and a path forward for win-win development. Are there any drawbacks to the Belt and Road Initiative? I know that Manolo had before said that nothing is perfect and there are valid criticisms. Are there any specific drawbacks or things that are lacking in the Belt and Road Initiative that you would like to speak to? As a proud Latin American, I can spend all day and night talking about drawbacks. But I think I have, to be more concise, there are particular areas. And this is not a problem particularly just of the Belt and Road Initiative, but it's a problem of all economic development models within the existing capitalist economy that we have in the world, which is that they're based in our regions on heavy extractive models, models that continue to extract natural resources from our continent at a great social human cost. One of the examples that I often look back at is the fact that China more and more depends on Latin America for the production of soy. And this is meant, this is a challenge for those, I mean, China is very environmentally conscious with many of its projects. When it does infrastructure projects around building roads, building highways, building trains, high-speed trains in Latin America, it's very environmentally conscious. But there are drawbacks when China has to think about how to feed its population and how to feed its growing development, that, you know, the amount of soy that it's actually growing and extracting out of Latin America means more land that needs to be made arable and less rainforest. That is a reality in Latin America. But I don't put that fully on the Chinese. I put part of the responsibility for that on our own national governments, like for example in Brazil. Bolsonaro has done nothing to defend the Amazon. That more land is being sold and raised essentially to grow soy is not China's fault. It's not the fault of people who live in China who, as they grow in population, need to eat. That is part of the lack of a national agenda of development that exists in our own countries. And Bolsonaro in Brazil is the biggest example of that. You know, I would focus on drawbacks. But I would also, because I don't ever like to end anything on a negative when we're thinking about important things like this. For me, the biggest example of why, ultimately, with all these drawbacks, this is a life-creating project, is that in the middle of this pandemic, in which so many of our countries, depending on vaccines for the COVAX through the COVAX programs, essentially invested millions of dollars, millions of dollars, expecting to receive vaccines from the major producers in the West, particularly the US and Europe, only in the receiving 45 million vaccines for a continent of close to 500 million people. China had to step in. China was the one who, under very good conditions, essentially provided many of them, most of it through selling at good cost, selling over 245 million vaccines to the people of Latin America. What would have happened if China did not exist in the middle of this pandemic? So, yes, China is not perfect. China's economic relations to Latin America are not perfect. There's an unequal development that still exists in our region. Ultimately, we have to transform this economic system into one that actually works, not just for our region, but for humanity. And that's going to take more than just criticizing China at any point. Yeah, I think that's a really important point. We can look at the reality. We could read the scare stories in the Western media, and there's lots of them about bad Chinese business practices, about how China is trapping countries on the Belt and Road in debt traps and is engaged in land grabs and all the rest of it. But it's important to actually compare these scare stories with reality. There was this big thing in the press recently about China taking over a new airport in Kampala in Uganda, because the Ugandans couldn't pay off their loan. And it just turned out to be completely untrue. It was literally fake news. The Ugandan government had to release a statement saying, this isn't true. And as always happens, you've got the accusation and its front page news and it's everywhere. Everyone's talking about it. It's all over Twitter. It's all over Facebook. It's all over TikTok, et cetera. And then the retraction comes out and the thing is debunked and no one ever hears of it. The retraction is completely invisible, but we don't have to look at these random scare stories because there's an actual history of China-Latin America cooperation. For example, China has loaned, as I mentioned earlier, billions of dollars to Venezuela, which is a country that over the last decade has had a very tough time economically. If China was holding Venezuela in a debt trap, what would you have seen? You would have seen China seizing Venezuelan assets. You would have seen China compromising Venezuelan sovereignty. You would have seen it taking over the state oil company. It hasn't done any of those things. Nothing of the sort. And there are parallels in numerous other countries. And aside from the business deals that China's making money out of, as Manola said, there's cooperation in a number of areas, including aid and including vaccines, literally for every two COVID-19 vaccine doses that are administered in Latin America and the Caribbean. One of them was manufactured in China, or comes from a Chinese company. And they're setting up joint ventures to produce these vaccines locally in a number of countries in the region. I went to a speech given by Luis Arce, the president of Bolivia recently in London. And he was saying, for a country like Bolivia, where so much of our economy is in the informal sector, vaccination was just completely crucial. You can't tell people who make a living selling food on the roadside, well, you just work from home for a few months, you'll be fine. That's not going to work, right? So getting people vaccinated means that people can return to their normal economic activity and they can survive. It's literally the difference between surviving and not surviving. He said, we were promised vaccines by the U.S. We were promised vaccines by COVAX. They didn't turn up. In the end, it was Russia and it was China who knocked on our door and said, do you want some vaccines? We're going to gift you some vaccines, or we're going to sell you some vaccines for not very much money. And that was transformative. So don't worry about the scare stories. Let's look at the reality. In terms of potential drawbacks of the Belt and Road, one could argue that it's kind of setting up a confrontation with the U.S. that it's kind of forcing countries to choose between China and the U.S., which actually, most countries, you'll find they want to have good relations with everyone. If you go to Argentina, you go to Mexico, you go to wherever you want, they want to have good relations with the U.S. and they want to have good relations with China. They want to be left to develop in peace and to be friends and not to have enemies. But this idea of forcing countries to choose, that's not China's doing. China's not imposing some conditions of, well, we won't trade with you if you also trade with the U.S. That's what the U.S. does. As we speak, the U.S. is doing everything it can to disrupt the China-Latin America relationship. For example, trying to persuade governments to keep Huawei out of their network infrastructure. The problem there isn't that China needs to change its behavior or that these countries need to change their behavior. The U.S. needs to change its behavior. This is part of a much bigger conversation. But the U.S. has to come around to the reality of a multipolar world, a multipolar future. Because what's the alternative? The alternative is that we all just accept continued U.S. hegemony. We all just accept the end of history, the Francis Fukuyama state of eternal imperialism. And we accept the organization of the world economy where the rest of the world just provides, as we've said, resources, land, labor markets for the benefit of the U.S., for the benefit of Western Europe and Japan. Clearly, that's not viable or desirable for the peoples of Latin America or the world. Beyond that, are there going to be teething difficulties with Belt and Road projects in Latin America? Are there going to be cultural differences, misunderstandings? No doubt some bad deals and some bad business practices as well. It's inevitable. But I would put these in the category of surmountable problems, problems that can be overcome. Awesome. Thank you for that. We have seven minutes left. But I think we can go over just a little bit because I'd also like to end on a more hopeful note. China has been investing a lot into green energy projects in Latin America. And last October, I believe Cuba joined the Belt and Road Initiative energy partnership. If we're allowed to be optimistic, what could the future look like as China continues to develop bilateral partnerships and trade with Latin American countries? I mean, it's interesting when you look at the data of China's loans in the last few years of the over $136 billion U.S. dollars that have been loaned out by China the last few years, over 93% of over $93 billion of it is in energy projects. There's definitely a keen focus, a very strategic outlook on, one, how to reduce the region's dependence on North America and the U.S. in particular for resolving its energy needs. Two, for countries that are producers of energy sources in the region, how to become less dependent on refining and finishing processes of energy production to be less dependent on the U.S. and other countries. And third, which is key, how to begin thinking about renewable sources of energy. And I think for countries particularly like Cuba, but for other countries in the region, these are three key elements. And sadly, the World Bank doesn't finance these types of projects. The IMF doesn't finance these types of projects. The U.S. government, in fact, has done everything possible to sabotage the financing of these types of projects. Because the agenda of the U.S. government has been, particularly for the last several administrations, is actually to impose ever more in Latin America the use of the U.S.'s fracking gas and oil sources of energy. It's so interconnected between the struggles that have been taking place in the United States, around the pipelines, around line three and so on, to the struggles of people in Latin America. Will Latin America be allowed to actually have energy sovereignty is the big debate? And I think China's investments are sort of pushing their regard. I think there's still multiple questions that, like Carlo said, have to be sorted out. I think there are going to be contradictions that can be surpassed and can be overcome and can be solved. But there are many complicated elements that still have to be seen about, for example, how do all these countries integrate more and more, not just in terms of their local economies, but in terms of the regional economy itself, of how to actually build towards energy sovereignty. I think there's going to have to be also the element that often, again, the IMF and the World Bank ignore, which is that for a continent like ours, which has been deprived due to neoliberalism, due to colonialism, due to economic processes of destruction of the Washington consensus, we've been deprived of the technicians, we have been deprived of the scientists, we have been deprived of people capable of running many of our own energy programs and sources will be to actually get training programs. And that's one of the main things that China is offering through this process of BRI. I mean, for the first time, there are a few countries that have a long history in this already, like Mexico and Brazil, economic giants in the region, Argentina as well. But for countries, for example, like Guatemala, like the Dominican Republic, even for countries like Haiti, who want to think about how to deal with their own the energy issues that come with low shedding, blackouts, etc., sending people to be trained and developed in China is a key thing for how these countries begin to rebuild their sovereignty. So this is in the future, might be one, an area of huge contradiction with the U.S., because it's one of the areas of trade and in relation to China that most create contradiction with U.S. interest in the region. We already saw what that meant in Bolivia, when the source of the Kuwaiti could say was actually over Bolivia's right to develop its own energy resources without interference from the U.S. The fact that Bolivia chose over all competitors to develop lithium and other energy resources with China under its own conditions, with its own technicians, with the development of its own priorities and agendas, we saw what the contradictions of that were. But this is for Latin America almost a do or die situation. Either we fight for our sovereignty fully in energy, politically, socially, culturally and otherwise with the help of an equal partner like China, or we submit to more centuries of being essentially the yard front or back of the United States government. Yeah, just in relation to Cuba, I think this kind of blossoming friendship between Cuba and China over the last 30 years, it's really one of the most politically profound components of the overall China-Latin America-China-Caribbean relationship. Obviously, there's a basic ideological affinity there, as Xi Jinping put it, when he was in Havana in 2014. He said, China and Cuba were both socialist countries, and we've got common beliefs and common objectives that unite our two peoples. But as you're no doubt aware, China and Cuba have had a pretty complicated relationship in the 60s and 70s and 80s, basically as a kind of side effect of the Sino-Soviet split. But in the special period, in the 90s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, China's support was really crucial in Cuba. One of the first deals very early on in the 90s was actually for China to provide a million low-cost bicycles to Havana. And levels of aid, trade investment, have just been steadily picking up since then. And now China accounts for one-third of Cuban imports and exports, which is a lot, if you bear in mind the kind of physical distance between the two countries. And Cuba now joining this Belt and Road Energy Partnership, which is a component of the BRI focused specifically on energy security and on clean energy, it could be really transformative. Cuba's got very little in the way of fossil fuel reserves. In the old days, in the 60s, 70s, 80s, it was almost completely dependent on Soviet oil. In the 2000s, luckily, Hugo Chávez got elected in 1999 and immediately established a great relationship between Venezuela and Cuba, in which Venezuela basically supplied Cuba's energy needs. But Cuba is a country that continues to have very significant and growing energy needs. And without the ability to reliably meet those needs. And at the same time, it's a country that's, it's a trailblazer in sustainability and environmental issues. Cuba for over three decades has been a consistent and often pretty lonely voice in international forums highlighting the urgency of the climate crisis, the biodiversity crisis. It's all very well for Joe Biden in 2021, 2022 to get up at the UN General Assembly and say, yeah, we've got a climate crisis, guys. Fidel was doing that in the 80s and 90s. And everyone was like, yeah, yeah, whatever, Fidel. So it's a priority for the Cuban government to develop clean energy. Unfortunately, at the moment, it's only five or 6% of its power that comes from renewable sources. But it's got a goal, a short-term goal of getting to 25% renewable by the end of this decade. And China's got a very big role to play in terms of the infrastructure for that, you know, China's established itself as by far the global leader in solar power and wind power. So it's a great opportunity. If you look, you know, further further in the continent, Argentina has also signed up to the Belt and Road. And that deal that's just been signed, you know, a couple of weeks ago includes two hydroelectric dams, the expansion of Argentina's biggest solar park, which was built by China, by the way, and the construction of a new nuclear power plant, which opens up a different discussion about the desirability of nuclear power. But certainly, you know, the two sides see it as an important component of the drive towards zero carbon. Nicaragua is another trailblazer in renewables and has also just signed up to the BRI. And zero carbon energy is very much part of that agreement. So while the West is, it's increasingly talking a good game on renewables, on getting to zero carbon, on saving the planet, on preventing climate breakdown, climate catastrophe, the West is actually making pretty slow progress on renewable energy. And what it's definitely not doing is meeting its commitments. It's clear, you know, legal responsibility and obligation to help developing countries transition to zero carbon, while it's not sharing its technology. Actually, it's South South cooperation, led by China, and focused around increasingly the Belt and Road, that offers a really important opportunity for the countries of the global South to get on this path of sustainability. Thank you for that. It's really exciting to think that there is progress somewhere in the world on, you know, carbon neutral green energy. So we're about at time. So I just want to thank both Carlos and Manolo again for being our lovely speakers today and in viewing us with so much knowledge. I'm soaking it in right now. Thank you again for sharing your perspectives with us. And we really appreciate you taking the time to speak with us today, despite all that's going in the world, all that's going on in the world right now. So thank you again to our lovely co-sponsors and to everyone who tuned in. So thank you again. Big hugs to all of you. We keep fighting on alongside Code Pink and all our friends around the world who believe in peace. Thank you everyone.