FROM EIR DAILY ALERT

---

Belt and Road Can Help Ibero-America and Caribbean Industrialize

Dec. 17, 2018 (EIRNS)—In an interview in Beijing with Xinhua published Dec. 16, Alicia Barcena, executive director of the UN’s Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), offered fulsome praise for China’s development since the launching of its reform and economic opening 40 years ago, and expressed the hope that the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) will play a key role in assisting Ibero-America’s industrialization.

Ibero-American’s industrial revival “is a great challenge,” she said, but emphasized that it is Chinese investment “that is invited to become part of that process. That will aid us to do what China did 40 years ago, which was to modify its productive structure.”

She offered an example of how this could happen by pointing to the example of the vast lithium reserves existing in Chile and Bolivia. Rather than just export that mineral, she asked, why not first “establish an industrial platform in the region ... to produce batteries or electric cars? Chinese investment can help to add value to lithium in Latin America.”

Barcena underscored that the BRI “is fundamental,” and recalled that last January, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi had invited the nations of the region to join this global development program, at the China-CELAC Forum summit held in Santiago, Chile. Now, she said, more than 10 of the region’s countries have joined. Barcena praised China’s advocacy of multilateralism and its vision “to share its technological advances with developing nations, which for us is fantastic.” At a time of great trade and technological tensions, “China’s becoming closer to many Latin American nations is very relevant.”