People's Republic of China–Mexico relations

Sino-Mexican relations

Map indicating locations of People's Republic of China and Mexico
China	Mexico

Mexico–People's Republic of China relations are foreign relations between Mexico and the People's Republic of China. They were established amidst tensions in 1972, and in recent years have seen an intense export rivalry over the United States market, with the Mexican government having accused the Chinese of impinging on its export territory by flooding the US with cheap goods manufactured in low-wage factories.^[1]

History

The work by the Mexico-based Augustinian Juan González de Mendoza may have been the first book published in Europe (1585) containing (an attempt at a reproduction of) Chinese characters. Here, apparently, Mendoza tries to draw the character 城 ("city").^[2]

Sino-Mexican contacts date to the early days of the Spanish colonial empire in the Americas and the Philippines. In the 16-17th century people, goods, and news traveling between China and Spain usually did so through the Philippines (where there was a large Chinese settlement) and (via the Manila galleon trade) Mexico. (This is different from the routes of the Portuguese and, later Dutch, who sailed from Europe to China around Africa and via the Indiana Ocean). This historic connection between the two countries is attested by two important early Spanish-language books (soon translated to Europe's other major languages) that were authored by Spanish ecclesiastics stationed in Mexico: Juan González de Mendoza's The history of the great and mighty kingdom of China and the situation thereof (1585) and Juan de Palafox y Mendoza's The History of the Conquest of China by the Tartars (posthumously published in 1670).^[3]

In 2005, Chinese President Hu Jintao came to Mexico promising increased investment in industries like automobile-parts manufacture and mineral exportation. In July 2008, Mexican President Felipe Calderón reciprocated with a visit to Beijing in a bid to improve bilateral trade. Nevertheless, China has focussed more on South American commodity producers such as Brazil and Chile to meet this end and fuel its chiefly-export economy. In 2008 Mexico exported just $2 billion worth of goods to China while importing some $34 billion from her, including clothing, electronics and "tourist trinkets".^[1]

2009 swine-flu spat

In 2009, in the wake of fears of a worldwide swine flu pandemic, thought to have started in Mexico, relations between the two countries, thitherto improving steadily, cooled substantially over China's decision to quarantine some seventy Mexican citizens, despite none of them showing symptoms of the virus. The Mexican government responded with outrage and, although China imposed the same measures on four nationals from the US and more than twenty from Canada, dubbed the act discriminatory. Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa used such terms as "unacceptable" and "without foundation", and advised compatriots not to travel to China.^[1]

China repudiated the accusations with the defence that its measures were strictly medical. Only one Mexican, a man in Hong Kong, was found to be infected. On May 5, the Chinese government, warning its citizens against travelling to Mexico, sent an aeroplane from Shanghai to collect some 100 of her citizens (mainly tourists, students and businesspersons) from Mexico, where 22 swine flu-related deaths had already occurred, and where the citizens had been hiding in northern hotels for some days waiting for the chance to leave. The Chinese were by no means alone in such measures, however. Reuters described the exodus thus:

Even as Mexico said the flu crisis seemed to be dissipating and prepared to reopen closed businesses, Chinese nationals wearing face masks and loaded with luggage streamed aboard a Chinese-chartered jet that stopped in Mexico City and the northern city of Tijuana.^[1]

Despite this, a mutual desire to increase bilateral trade and increase shipping of Mexican raw materials into China suggested that diplomatic tensions would be only temporary. "This should not affect the relationship in the medium-term because we are talking about an overreaction on both sides", said Enrique Dussel, an expert on Mexican-Chinese trade at the UNAM University in Mexico City.^[4]

But Reuters quoted Dan Erikson, an analyst at the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue as noting that, "Of all the major countries in Latin America, China has the most tense relationship with Mexico. The swine flu crisis has just revealed once again that they haven't built the partnership that both countries say that they want. There is a lot of mutual ignorance and no strategic framework. This just shows there is a lot of work to be done [...]."^[4]

See also

Chinese Mexican

References

• Reuters. "Flu spat cools budding Mexico-China relationship." Reuters. 5 May 2009. (accessed May 6, 2009).

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b c d} Reuters 2009.
2. ^ See footnotes to pp. 121-122 in the annotated 1853 English edition: The history of the great and mighty kingdom of China and the situation thereof
3. ^ Chen, Min-Sun [Chen Mingsheng] (2003), Mythistory in Sino-Western Contacts. Jesuit Missionaries and the Pillars of Chinese Catholic Religion, Thunder Bay (Ontario): Lakehead University Printing Services, pp. 159-172, ISBN 0886630452 
4. ^ ^{a b} Quoted in Reuters 2009.