Soft Power with Chinese Characteristics: Pandemic Diplomacy in Latin America and the Caribbean

Empirical analysis of China's health diplomacy toward Latin America and the Caribbean in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic suggests that even though the region remains peripheral among China's foreign priorities its health diplomacy functions as a diffusion tool for increasing its soft power in the region, particularly against the background of the evolving China-United States rivalry. The source and development of Chinese soft power in the Global South should be understood as the diffusion effect of the combination and interdependence of its material hard power and its ideational soft power. Un analisis empirico de la diplomacia sanitaria de China hacia America Latina y el Caribe en el contexto de la pandemia de COVID-19 sugiere que, aunque la region sigue ocupando un lugar periferico entre las prioridades exteriores de China, su diplomacia sanitaria funciona como una herramienta de difusion para aumentar su poder blando en la region, particularmente en el contexto de la rivalidad entre China y Estados Unidos. La fuente y el desarrollo del poder blando chino en el Sur Global deben entenderse como el efecto disperso de la combinacion e interdependencia de su poder duro material y su poder blando ideacional.