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How China's Relations With Peru Explain its Approach to Diplomacy

By Nathaniel Parish Flannery

"A number of social conflicts in Peru has risen drastically…involving mining concessions and investment," explains AS/COA’s Alana Tummino as Chinese companies struggle to circumvent growing environmental protests.

On weekday mornings in small towns high in the mountains of Peru, large trucks owned by Chinese mining companies rumble down the narrow streets. Their presence in Peru is, in a way, a surprise; vociferous and sometimes violent activists have occasionally rebuffed Chinese resource-extraction projects in the country. Many local residents are concerned about negative environmental consequences and worried that they won’t reap any real benefits from the projects. Nevertheless the investment continues: In 2010, the Chinese mining companies Minmetals, Chinalco, Shougang and Zijing Mining Group announced plans to invest more than $7 billion in Peruvian mining projects by 2017. And as each mineral-laden ship chugs out of the harbor in Lima to cross the Pacific, China further solidifies its status as an important strategic partner for Peru.

The two countries are separated by more than 10,000 miles, but China has a long history with Peru. In the mid-1800s, more than 100,000 Chinese laborers braved months-long journeys to move to the South American country in order to work as indentured servants, and today, a sizable portion of Peru’s residents trace part of their ancestry back to China. Peru is currently home to the largest ethnic Chinese population in Latin America, and over the last two centuries the Asian country’s immigrants have influenced Peru’s culture, cuisine, and community life....

Alana Tummino, a Latin America researcher from the Americas Society, told me that “Many of Peru’s mines are located in poor areas often close to indigenous communities, and the number of social conflicts in Peru has risen drastically in the past few years involving mining concessions and investment.”

Slowing growth in Peru could force the government to reduce the budget for social spending and pressure President Humala to pay more attention to the protesters’ demands.  In 2011, Lima created a new law adhering to the International Labor Organization’s Convention 169, a legally binding international statue that gives indigenous communities a voice in approving extractive projects that affect their communities. And this May, after several years of heated demonstrations against mining projects, Peru’s government passed a new “Prior Consultation” law that gives certain indigenous groups the right to a non-binding vote of approval on any project that affects their communities. More symbolically President Humala also attended a ceremony in an isolated Amazon town where 33 people died in protests in 2009. Nevertheless, protests by indigenous groups still present a serious, disruptive risk to mining projects....

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