China’s charm offensive

Traditionally the backyard of the US, Latin America is fast becoming China’s new best friend. Such is the apparent warmth of the relationship that Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chávez, recently declared that Mao Tse-tung and 19th-century independence leader Simon Bolivar would have been great friends had they met.

Ideologically, communist China and free-market Latin America have little in common. But resource-poor China is eager to gain control of gas, copper and oil production to fuel its red-hot economy, which was the world’s fastest-growing at 9% in 2004.