摘要：The opening ceremony of thefourth ministerial meeting of the China-CELAC (the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) Fo

By Li Xing and Italo Poty

Lead: China's approach of non-interference and infrastructure investment is providing Latin American nations with moreeconomic alternatives and adevelopment path beyond traditional Western paradigms.

The opening ceremony of thefourth ministerial meeting of the China-CELAC (the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) Forumwas held in Beijing on May 13. Chinese President Xi Jinping andBrazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, among other leaders, attended the opening ceremony. President Lula, on a five-day visit to China, used the occasion to focus on eliminating trade barriers and deepening bilateral cooperation. Together, these developments signal the beginning of a new phase in China–LAC (Latin America and Caribbean) relations, unfolding against a backdrop of rising global uncertainty fueled by the United States' unpredictable trade and foreign policies.

Why are Latin America and the Caribbean so interested in deepening cooperation with China?

Historically, the region has been shaped by its ties with the U.S., whose policies since the 1980s have promoted a liberal economic model. This model emphasized trade liberalization, financial market openness, privatization and the state's retreat from developmental roles. However, these reforms often led to negative results: deindustrialization, greater social inequality and increased dependence on dominant economies. Recently, the U.S. has imposed tariffs on several LAC countries, causing uncertainties, disrupting supply chains and increasingpressure to reinforce commercial dependency.

China, by contrast, represents a unique opportunity for trade and investment that has the potential to drive economic and social development. It adheresto the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, which emphasize non-interference in the internal affairsof other states and the promotion of mutually beneficial international cooperation. This approach includes infrastructure investments and technology transfers based on win-win cooperation.

At the same time, China's own development trajectory has sparked interest among developing nations. Many seek to understand how China transformed from a peripheral economy into a leading global economic and technological powerhouse in such a short space of time.

One of the puzzling questions facing scholars and policymakers is how to comprehend and interpret the Chinese path to modernization, marked by dramatic transformation and remarkable achievements over the past four decades. Its success in lifting over 800 million people out of poverty, fostering rapid industrial upgrading, and achieving sustained economic growth has demonstrated the potential of a development paththat combines strong state leadership with market-oriented reforms. Moreover, China's approach, including major initiatives like the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), offers an alternative to Western liberal development paradigms by emphasizing infrastructure investment, state coordination, and pragmatic policymaking.

China's experience has reshaped global development discourse, offering a compelling reference point for nations seeking alternative paths to modernization beyond the traditional Western blueprint.

The Chinese path to modernization is widely characterized as adistinctive development paradigm, often termed the"Chinese development path." This framework denotes an economic system where the state maintains decisive influence over strategic sectors and resources, harmonizing market dynamics with centralized governance. Key features include state ownership or influence over critical industries, a synthesis of market-oriented reforms with long-term strategic state planning, and adual focuson advancing domestic economic priorities while cultivating competitiveness in global markets. This pathunderscores a pragmatic balance between state authority and market efficiency, enabling rapid modernization without abandoning political or economic sovereignty.Most importantly, the Chinese system is featured by the leadership of the Communist Party of China, the ruling party, whose mission is to realize the great Chinese dream of national rejuvenation.

Understanding the Chinese development pathrequires a foundational comprehension of China's organic state-market-society relationships. This framework elucidates how China's unique socio-cultural and political identity systematically shapes its economic institutions and governance structures, blending historical legacies with modern statecraft to forge a system of state-market-society coordination. Specifically, the Chinese development pathhighlights the state's role in mediating between the disruptive pressures of market-driven globalization, such as marketization, commodification and deregulation, and the stabilizing social and cultural traditions deeply rooted in Chinese society. Key aspects to this balance include a societal reverence for state authority and centralized governance; cultural values emphasizing discipline, collective orientation and social harmony; a longstanding emphasis on education and intellectual achievement; a hybrid system of property rights and business ownership comprising state-owned enterprises alongside private and mixed-ownership entities; and traditional practices of network-based interaction, which have all contributed positively to economic outcomes.

These structural aspects enable the state to channel market forces within a framework that aligns with national priorities, combining economic modernization with social and political stability.

Simply put, the Chinese development pathreflects a unique institutional ecosystem where socio-cultural heritage and state power synergize to tacklethe challenges between global economic and political forces and local socio-political imperatives.

While theChinese path represents a unique system rooted in the nation'shistorical, political and cultural context —making it inherently non-replicable—other countries in theGlobal Southcan learn and adapt selective elements of Chinese developmental practices. For example, the BRI servesas a platform for cross-border knowledge transfer, enabling developing nations to engage with China's policy innovations while tailoring them to local realities.

China's engagement with the rest of the Global South has generally expanded strategic and economic spacefor many countries, offering new avenues for growth and reducing reliance on Western powers, effectively expanding their "room for maneuver."

All things considered, astriking contrast defines today's global economy: while the U.S., the world's largest economy, is causing instability in international trade, China, the second-largest economy, is promoting stability and predictability for its economic partners. China's expanding economic engagement with LAC represents a positive source of increased "room for maneuver" for the region within the global system. By providing alternatives to traditional Western partners in areas such as trade, infrastructure and finance, China enables LAC countries to "seize the chance"to diversify their external relations and reduce dependency, thereby gaining greater strategic and economic flexibility.

The BRI, as extended to the region, can be understood as a form of "cooperation by invitation" — a process driven by China's vision of a global community of shared future. AsLAC countries develop internal capacity to align external engagements with national development priorities, strengthen institutions and enhance competitiveness, they will have greater "room for maneuver"and benefit greatly from this opportunity,turning external promotion into sustainable internal advancement.

In a word, as China and its LAC partners join hands to implement the five programs announced by President Xi on May 13, they will see further enhanced mutually beneficial exchanges and cooperation and increasing progress in their effort to build the China-LAC community with a shared future. The process of LAC countries drawing upon the Chinese development path will surely produce exciting changes for the region in the years and decades to come, which can be discussed in another article.

Li Xing is a Yunshan leading scholar and director of the European Research Center at Guangdong Institute for International Strategies, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, China. He is also an adjunct professor of international relations at Aalborg University, Denmark.

Italo Poty is a lecturer of international relations at the Institute of Strategic Studies of the Fluminense Federal University, Braziland a researcher at the Center for Studies in Contemporary China and Asia of the institute. He is currently affiliated with the Guangdong Institute for International Strategies as a guest researcher.

来源：中国网