Latin America can aid China's transition

Premier Li Keqiang's ongoing visit to Latin America is a potent reminder of the vigor and dynamism of Sino-Latin American relations. In the wake of the first China-Community of Latin American and Caribbean States Ministerial Forum in Beijing in January and the state visits to the region's countries by President Xi Jinping in 2013 and 2014, Li's trip opens up new possibilities and opportunities for trans-Pacific links between China and the Americas.

Apart from Brazil, Li will also visit three of the four members of the Pacific Alliance: Colombia, Peru and Chile. Xi visited the fourth, Mexico, in 2013. The PA, set up in 2012 by countries on the Pacific coast of the Americas with a special interest in promoting trade with Asia, is the latest of a number of Latin American regional integration schemes to attract the attention of Chinese policymakers and companies.

Li, his high-level ministerial delegation and the 120 Chinese company executives accompanying him will be exposed to the three member states of an entity that has elicited considerable international attention. With a population of 214 million, the PA represents a little over a third of the population of Latin America and the Caribbean, and accounts for 37 percent of the regional products. If the PA member states were to merge, they would be the eighth-largest exporting power in the world. Their foreign trade was worth $1.1 trillion in 2013.