Noticias
April, 2023.- China’s key investments in Chile: this is what you can review in the new interactive map Regional Repository of Chinese Investments in Latin America, a digital tool that compiles in a detailed and georeferenced way the investments of the Asian country in Chile, Peru and Argentina.
The platform currently gathers the information and location of confirmed foreign direct investments (FDI) from China in these countries between 2003 and 2023, classified by type of project, economic sector and companies involved. The long-term goal is to incorporate more countries into the interactive map database, thus covering the entire region.
The project was developed by the ICLAC Millennium Nucleus together with The Inter-American Dialogue, and was supported by IMFD Innovation in the generation of the data visualization tool. “It was a very challenging project, because we needed to connect information and data of different types, in a format that was geo-referenced and that would allow those who consulted it to have clear and organized information on different types of investments,” says Gabriela Contreras, software developer at Innovación IMFD who was in charge of the project.
ICLAC researcher and director of the Asia & Latin America Program of The Inter-American Dialogue, Margaret Myers, highlighted the collaborative nature of the initiative at the launch of the platform: “I think it is something absolutely fundamental, it is something that represents ICLAC as well, the collaboration between institutions in the hemisphere”. Myers pointed out that during data collection, the contribution of partners who work in depth on these issues was crucial, such as the Center for China and Asia-Pacific Studies of the Universidad del Pacífico (Peru), which collaborated in its development.
For the director of the ICLAC Millennium Nucleus and academic of the UC Institute of Political Science, Francisco Urdinez, this map allows “to understand the regional heterogeneities within the countries, and also to make a granular analysis of which are the most active Chinese actors in the region”. The researcher also emphasizes the academic value of the tool, for future professionals and new research in the area: “Having the availability of the data opens a huge world of original ideas, of combination with other existing data that help to understand what is the local impact, at a regional communal level, of the enormous presence of Chinese capital in the region”.
In the last two decades China has become a key trading partner for Latin America and the Caribbean, which is reflected in the increase in trade between the two regions: if in 2000 it was around US$ 14 billion, in 2022 the figure rose to US$ 500 billion, according to a study by ECLAC in 2023.
“One of the most challenging things about this project was to encapsulate the idea that ICLAC had: to create an attractive visualization with a large amount of data, which are in the form of points and sections, and also georeferenced. We consider that the result is a very good solution, and we are already talking about moving on to a new stage of development in this project”, highlights Gabriela Contreras.
The Innovation and Technology Transfer area of the Millennium Institute Foundational Research on Data works with companies, organizations and institutions, applying the most effective techniques, based on cutting-edge science and technology, to extract value from data to enhance the development of Chile and the region, providing data solutions for industry, the public sector and society.
