Heritage Foundation Leadership for America

Location: The Heritage Foundation's Lehrman Auditorium

China is spreading its influence in both Africa and Latin America. Its companies – many of them state-owned – are investing where western businesses fear to tread. It assists some of the more dictatorial, kleptocratic, and/or anti-American states such as Sudan’s genocidal regime, the Mugabe dictatorship in Zimbabwe, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, and Evo Morales in Bolivia. Meanwhile it extracts raw materials such as oil from Angola and Venezuela, platinum from Zimbabwe, copper from Chile and Zambia, iron ore from South Africa and Brazil. Driving this outreach are strategic shopping and investment lists, as China tries hard to insure the natural resources to feed its industrial engine. Should the United States be concerned, and if so precisely what can it do? A group of Heritage Foundation and outside experts will examine the issues and the possibilities.

Related Reading

Balancing China's Growing Influence in Latin America

China's Influence in Africa: Implications for the United States