Along with the quantitative section of the paper, I wanted to include a case study of Brazil’s relationship with China. Latin America (esp. Brazil) has always been my main regional interest in IR and economics and China’s presence has really shaken things up.

The Brazil-China economic relationship has boomed over the past decade and in 2009 China surpassed the US as Brazil’s largest trading partner. From 2009 to 2010, China’s FDI inflows to Brazil increased from $300 million to $17 billion, more than a third of the total flow in to Brazil. Questions, though, have arisen from the Brazilian side on how beneficial its relationship will prove to be. Brazil fears the impact of Chinese companies dumping manufactured goods on its domestic manufacturers and that the relationship depends far too much on it exporting commodities and raw materials, which could lead to de-industrialization. Many have claimed that Brazil’s dependence on commodity exports to China looks like neo-colonialism. The cultural distance between the partners also does not help.

On its face, the Brazil-China relationship is marked by some of the most common, static indicators of distance, such as language (with the exception of the now independent Macau region), religion, and geographical distance. Aside from Brazil importing a few thousand Chinese workers to take over for emancipated slaves in the late 1800s and more recent migrations, the countries had little to no interaction, economic or political, for much of the past few centuries. China, today, also has a reputation for autocracy and poor environmental, human rights, and labor practices, which all fall in striking contrast to the image Brazil has constructed of itself since the end of the military dictatorship.

These frictions have played out on the macro and micro level, with both the Brazilian government and individuals sometimes showing that they are wary of China’s power. For example, the Brazilian government has brought a number of cases to the World Trade Organization against China for suspected dumping and it has also criticized China’s valuation of the yuan. In the workplace, Brazilian organizational and business culture often conflicts with the model Chinese companies bring to Brazil. Chinese companies function with a strong amount of centralization, that puts little trust in local managers and has a bad reputation toward labor rights. Generally, Chinese companies hire Chinese workers to avoid cultural tensions, but Brazilian officials push foreign companies to employ local workers. Brazil’s strong labor protections, bureaucratic red tape for businesses, and what is viewed as a “lax” and “informal” attitude toward work in comparison to the Chinese are among the many common issues, while “a survey of 500 Brazilian executives working for Chinese, North American and European companies… found that 42 percent of Brazilian executives working for Chinese companies left their jobs within a year, a 68 percent higher turnover rate than found in the other firms studied” (Brooks 2011).

China has attempted to alleviate these fears through a few avenues. They have recently opened two Confucius Institutes — one in Brasilia and one in São Paulo — which offer language courses and sponsor a variety cultural programs. Confucius Institutes exist all over the world (and apparently W&M is getting one now, too) and function as a university partnership program, with an exchange of faculty and students. There also are business development organizations, such as the Brazil-China Chamber of Economic Development (CBCDE) that offer services to help mitigate the distance between the two countries.

I’m wary of using the term ‘soft power’ since that just opens up a whole new theoretical mess, but Chinese programs like Confucius Institutes would probably fall into the category of China attempting to project its soft power into Latin America. I’m more comfortable with employing the model of relationship marketing here, than trying to fit the Brazil-China relationship into a realist paradigm.