Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2021. xv, 211 pp. (B&W photos, tables, illustrations.) US$24.00, paper. ISBN 9781501759420.
In San José, residents scoff at the replica Tang Dynasty arch at the entrance to the newly-inaugurated Chinatown, erected in the years after Costa Rica switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 2007. The monument was prepared in time for Xi Jinping’s visit in 2013, but he skipped the site as Costa Rican protesters denounced the construct as an affront to local history.
Costa Rica was the first country in Central America to switch recognition from Taiwan to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). While a handful of Taiwan’s remaining diplomatic partners are still in the region, Costa Rica and other countries that have made the switch are experiencing myriad changes, not least of which is the Chinese embassy’s relationship with the local Chinese community. The mutual aid associations that were funded and supported by Taiwan now find themselves largely ignored by Beijing’s diplomats, as members lament that the new ambassador only comes to big events. The arrival of the PRC has challenged not only Costa Rican identities, but other meanings of China in Costa Rica.
This is a small glimpse of the tapestry of stories collected in Transpacific Developments that analyze the politics of development and collective meanings of China in Central America. Author Monica DeHart employs an ethnographic approach drawing on field research in three Central American countries—Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Guatemala—combining qualitative interviews with government officials, small business owners, recent migrants, and union leaders (among many others) with participant observation at sites of engagement, including trade expos, infrastructure projects, and community functions. DeHart describes the framework as a “transpacific analytic” designed to illuminate contemporary conceptions of China atop a history of development in Central America (9). In uncovering the layers of ideas and identities inscribed by local actors on a plurality of Chinas, the book is revelatory.
DeHart divides the book into two parts: the first part assembles the many historical and cultural links that constitute multiple Chinas in Central America, including the nineteenth century migrations rooted in contract labour and exclusionary policies from which Chinese communities emerged, together with more recent waves of migration from Taiwan and the PRC. These transpacific encounters are chronicled alongside two models of development in Central America: the United States’ plan for hegemony in the Western Hemisphere from the Monroe Doctrine through the Panama Canal and beyond, and the Taiwanese approach to maintain diplomatic partners based on “South-South, win-win” development projects tailored to specific contexts that were pioneered by Taipei (58–59).
In the second part, DeHart examines the current expansionary era of PRC-led development, from Belt and Road-financed highways and roads to the patterns of corruption that have fed accusations of Beijing practicing “infrastructure imperialism” (98). DeHart’s interviews illustrate how historical perceptions of China continue to inform contemporary misapprehensions of Chinese development, feeding frustration at PRC-sponsored trade expos and anger at the use of imported labour in public works. A concision and balance in the historical accounts allows DeHart to convey the stories collected from the field on an appropriate canvas.
DeHart further asserts the transpacific analytic as a “powerful intervention in conversations that seek to understand China-Latin America relations through the lens of China’s ‘rise’” (11). This intervention is in part presented as a challenge to realist perspectives in international relations (IR) theory that view China’s development strategy as primarily driven by great power competition. DeHart concludes by invoking the distrust encountered of Chinese enterprise at all levels, deducing that fears of a new era of Chinese global hegemony “must be tempered” by these recurring patterns of distrust (169). However, while DeHart succeeds in unraveling the complex forms of meaning taking shape in response to China’s geopolitical might, it remains doubtful whether any of these variables will influence the PRC to change course from its strategy of power projection or shift focus away from state-to-state contacts to cultivate the kind of social linkages that Taiwan has long pursued.
For example, DeHart highlights the protests in Nicaragua organized to oppose the stalled Beijing-linked canal project and heroically confront the violent repression of the Ortega regime. But no theoretical models are cited to determine what impact such movements may have on Ortega’s authoritarian politics; DeHart presumes the PRC will lose interest in Nicaragua after Panama switched recognition, ostensibly giving Beijing access to the existing canal. There is no discussion of the potential for Nicaragua to make its own diplomatic switch from Taipei to Beijing, an event that took place after the book was published. The lack of engagement with IR theory or social movement theory to assess these dynamics is a shortcoming of the book.
The larger geopolitical question is whether great power competition will ultimately lead to direct conflict between China and the United States. Central America has a role in bringing the PRC closer to its goal of reunification with Taiwan, as full diplomatic recognition of Beijing could presage a military campaign and a corresponding American effort to defend the island. The possibility of a transpacific war (routinely discussed by IR theorists) is no longer unthinkable in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Indeed, DeHart captures this sense of fatalism toward the prospect of a more singular China when quoting a young Chinese-Tica entrepreneur: “My generation realizes … [s]ince Taiwan is going to return to China, the difference doesn’t really matter” (74).
But IR theorists too often assume geopolitical rivalry as the sole fulcrum of state behaviour without attention to the causal effects of social movements and cultural transformations. One of the fundamental dilemmas of the new Cold War will be the extent to which patterns of social mobilization impact, and even alter, the most intense spheres of competition between the great powers. Readers of this book will learn how individuals and communities in Central America are reinventing themselves to both adapt to and confront the products of that global struggle. Central America emerges as one of the many frontlines pitting the agency of local imagination against the structure of the international system.
Robert A. Portada III
Kutztown University, Kutztown