Analyses of Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI) sometimes question the investment criteria of Chinese firms, suggesting that market rules are not fundamental but secondary to political and geostrategic concerns. Questioning the apolitical nature of markets, the present article uses the internationalization of China's mining industry as a case study to ascertain the criteria that guide Chinese FDI. It first examines quantitative data from 2000 to 2010 which suggests that Chinese mining investment in Latin America and worldwide gravitates towards liberal economies. Second, by focusing on the projects of Chinese mining firms in Peru, the article illustrates how China's overseas mineral quest is best explained by probing into the integrated strategies of individual mining firms which seek to capitalize their comparative advantage in accessing Chinese markets and the political momentum of the “Going Out” strategy.

Mexico's economic relationship with China has intensified substantially in the last decade. Based on an increasing literature on the overall and aggregate relationship, this analysis proposes a detailed examination of the auto parts-automobile chain, which is of utmost importance for both countries and will be significant for understanding the future trade relationship between them. In order to understand the industrial organization of Mexico and China, the article first gives an overview of the international trade and industrial organization patterns. After establishing the characteristics of Mexico's and China's legal framework, production, employment and trade, the analysis concludes with a group of proposals to improve binational co-operation. Both countries – China interested in increasing its export platform based on Chinese parts brands and Mexico supplying parts and components and providing decades of experiences in international networks – can benefit from these suggestions and overcome current tensions.

China's increasing, and increasingly visible, engagement in Latin America has led to a variety of analyses, many based on either international relations notions of realism or international political economy precepts of trade. Rather than seeing China's rhetoric on its relations with Latin America as fluff that conceals a harder reality, this article takes rhetoric seriously as a device of “framing and claiming”: a way in which political elites in China interpret the fast-changing developing world and China's place in it. The article explores how political elites have understood the sources of China's own domestic development and then projected those notions on to other parts of the developing world, through earlier “fractal” logics of development whereby each state repeats one model of development in its own way and a currently dominant “division of labour” logic that posits one integrated model of development whereby complementarity and comparative advantage hold sway. The article concludes with a comparison of China's relations with Peru and Brazil, suggesting that China's bilateral relations with Brazil indicate a newer, emerging rhetoric of global partnership based on equality.

Has China been a hegemonic challenge to the United States in Latin America in recent years? The article explores this question by setting a comparison with historical cases of instances of hegemonic challenge in Latin America, searching for similarities and differences, and looking for makers of rivalry as a way to start to distinguish perception from reality. I stress the instrumentality of framing issues, since they serve for internal mobilization and for control of allies. The article also attempts to illuminate the issue of how the United States has reacted to China's growing presence in an area historically considered within its sphere of interests, or “backyard,” and about the dialogue between the United States and China about the region. It provides insights on the United States, China and Latin American countries’ policy makers’ thinking, collected through off-the- record interviews and closed-door debriefings.