China and Latin America: Investments, Disputes, and the Law

In the United States and Europe, general perceptions on China's conduct abroad is shaped almost entirely by geopolitical rivalry and by debates over whether China is upholding or undermining the existing international legal order. The analytical lens is overwhelmingly that of the Global North, and the questions it tends to produce are narrow ones: is China complying with the rules set by the Global North, and does Chinese investment and corporate behaviour abroad diverge from Global North standards and models? Framed this way, the inquiry flattens what is actually happening on the ground — not only in the Global North itself, but also in the other parts of the world where China is increasingly present. Latin America offers a different vantage point, and, crucially, a different set of agents. The region appears with growing frequency in the strategic calculations of Washington and Beijing alike, but the local dynamics — how Chinese capital, contracts, and legal templates actually travel through Latin American institutions — remain poorly understood from the Global North. Latin American firms, regulators, courts, prosecutors, unions, civil-society organizations, and state-owned enterprises are not simply on the receiving end of Chinese capital and Chinese legal templates; they negotiate, contest, and at times reshape them. Reading the encounter only from Beijing or Washington misses the work being done in São Paulo, Lima, Santiago, Mexico City, Quito, Buenos Aires, Bogotá, Panama City, and Montevideo. The workshop reframes the inquiry accordingly. Rather than asking whether China's engagement is exceptional or rule-compliant, it asks how the legal architecture surrounding China's global engagements is encountered, mediated, and reworked on the ground in Latin America. ● Host: Institute of International Relations (IRI), PUC-Rio · Rio de Janeiro. ● Co-conveners: Mapping Global China; NYU US-Asia Law Institute; Observa China; PUC-Rio; University of Oxford.