The now famous phrase of Diana Mondino about China In the report she gave in Paris a few days after the Chancellor’s tour of Shanghai and Beijing, it cannot be said that she went unnoticed in Xi Jinping’s offices, but she did pass by without too many injuries. At that moment, Beijing was thinking more about how they had managed to stabilize their geopolitical presence in Latin America than the old joke about all Chinese being equal.
There will be protests and perhaps some diplomatic displeasure expressed in public by the Chinese but the reality is that the important thing for China was the first part of that phrase Mondino that the journalism raised in a tone of controversy but that the Beijing Foreign Ministry received with delight: “No one detected that there were military personnel there, those who were investigating did not identify that there were military personnel.”
China He lives doing diplomacy to achieve recognition and equal treatment with the rest of the capitalist world. That is, it works diplomatically 365 days a year so that its economy, deeply directed by the Central Committee of the PC but destined to compete with the rest of the nations that play with the rules of the market, is not discriminated against or questioned in its commercial practices.
The path to achieving this recognition does not come from a direct relationship with the United States, it is obvious, but from commercial interaction with the rest of the world. This activity and the creation of the Belt and Road, the main project in its global infrastructure strategy that aims to multiply in the world through trade agreements with countries that it intends to associate in a kind of Chinese trade Commonwealth, are central in their battle with the United States to lead the future economic world.
In both objectives, Argentina has just given an invaluable hand to China, much more valuable than any other gesture that Cristina Fernández de Kirchner would have made towards Beijing. Hence, the Chancellor’s discursive amateurism in considering all Chinese equal, something that I later tried to deny without much success, went into the background without too many diplomatic problems despite the fact that the Argentine press wanted to elevate the episode to the level of a global breakup.
The journey of Mondino to China It was, by far, the most important international interaction that the Government of Javier Milei has had since assuming the presidency. Achieving a balance with Beijing while embracing the alliance with the United States in the midst of an electoral process where the game in Washington already involves reading what the world will be like under Donald Trump and ensuring that everything works in harmony rather than a diplomatic success. It seems like a miracle. With sloppiness and all, the Milei Government seems to achieve it for now.
Before his flight to Paris, where he restarted the procedures for joining the OECD, Mondino He left the Chinese much more than imagined and took away the security of having straightened the negotiation to renew the swap with yuan without having to advance to a forced cancellation of the amounts that the Government of Alberto Fernández had activated and executed in dollars.
That is why you have to read the words of Mondino in Beijing with much more attention than the reference that local journalism made to the joke about the physical equality of the Chinese. “The swap has existed for more than 20 years. Why is it a matter of great concern this year? It is true that Massa used it in a way that was absolutely unimaginable to intervene in the market, with a mechanism of extremely dubious transparency. But the swap as such has existed for decades,” Mondino said.
First issue resolved: Argentina will not advance again with the intention of pressuring to use the swap in any operation related to the exit from the stocks. Much less ask the Chinese Central Bank for cash.
He also guaranteed China which recognizes the controversial base that the Chinese have in Bajada del Agrio, in Neuquén, as a civil operation and for scientific purposes. In your answers Mondino He did not refrain from explaining the history of that base that was installed after an agreement signed by Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in 2012, but which also had full ratification by Mauricio Macri when his government declared that the investigation was prohibited. for military purposes. That is to say, for everyone else the presence of the Chinese in Patagonia was validated. China Now it achieves something else: an extra civil operation certificate for its base that equates it to a similar one that the European Union has in Malargüe, Mendoza.
Another central point cannot be excluded from the list of conversations with the Chinese. Before leaving for China, Mondino He had already guaranteed the ambassador of that country in Argentina that the Milei Government would not budge from the agreements reached regarding works and infrastructure. Already in China, Mondino ratified this principle to the point that in the interview he gave to official television CGTN he confirmed that the infrastructure projects that are pending in the country may be framed in the scope of the Belt and Road. More for Xi Jinping impossible. The upset over the trip to Taiwan was far away and the declaration of supporting the existence of a single China was close.
Javier Milei It maintains a discursive imprint from the campaign that places it as an undisputed ally of the United States. If we look at the list of Foreign Direct Investments in the country, that is the only strategic path. In 2023, the list of these countries was led by “the United States, with net income of US$ 968 million, followed by Brazil, with US$ 871 million, and Spain, with US$ 630 million. Next came Uruguay, with US$245 million; China, with net flows of US$ 162 million, and France, with US$ 155 million”, all according to BCRA reports.
In terms of foreign trade, our clients were first Brazil, with 17.8%, the EU, 10.3%, the United States, 8.5%, and China, 7.9%. Almost the same countries are at the top of our imports and all with a trade balance deficit against us.
It is clear that, if the Government consolidates the strategy of maintaining civilized relations with China while embracing its alliance with the United States without causing ruptures, for the first time we would be carrying out a logical framework of foreign trade policy that has not been recorded for a long time.
Argentina had everything in its diplomatic life. From a Nobel Peace Prize winner, such as Foreign Minister Carlos Saavedra Lamas, forger of international doctrines that are still a reference in the relationship between countries, to the diplomatic atrocities that Cristina Fernández de Kirchner made Héctor Timerman do when he was to the Ezeiza airport armed with pliers to open a communications suitcase that came as material from a United States Air Force plane. The Government opened the suitcase and seized it and as a consequence of that fact the Pentagon had to suspend its international communications for two hours and change all its passwords.
That fact ended up being a mess, but no bigger than the fraudulent negotiation of the memorandum with Iran that Timerman also signed with his Iranian counterpart in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, while behind Buenos Aires negotiated with Tehran other clauses that may never be known, but that They never seemed destined to find the truth, as was publicly said regarding the case of the AMIA attack.
Thank God, Argentine diplomacy is not limited to those pieces of paper but to a more honorable existence. The Nation’s Foreign Service Institute, the school where our diplomats are trained, has global prestige to the point that other countries send their officials to study there. The problem comes when each government in power places political officials without any experience above them.
The world that Milei has ahead of him is not going to help him much. Donald Trump has serious chances of winning the presidency in the upcoming elections and since that moment Washington’s action in its trade war with China can change again. The messages that were seen this week from Joe Biden and Trump after the eviction of the students who took over an area of Columbia University in support of Palestine and Hamas, violating the entry of Jewish professors and students to that university, speak of the weakness with which the Democrat faces the chances of re-election. That Trump world will be much more hostile and will require alignments that Milei may not be able to avoid.
In Buenos Aires the libertarian Government faces another week of definitions. The pragmatism of Mondino In China it will have a parallel in the negotiations taking place in the Senate. This time, unlike Deputies, there will be other points for and against to take into account.
Guillermo Francos was the great creator of dialogue in the Deputies to achieve the approval of the Bases Law and the Tax Law. In the Senate, Victoria Villarroel started a few days ago with this task that aims to guarantee approval or, at least, a quick passage through that chamber that allows for a calm second round in Deputies if there are changes.
Many believe that this is the probable and safest horizon to have the laws approved perhaps towards the end of May, even after the event that Milei organizes in Córdoba. It would not be a tragedy for the government, quite the opposite, as long as libertarians remain on the path of negotiation and learning, something that Milei does not show every day, such as when he exaggerates in his account of X, even in politics. abroad. In the case of Spain, he went overboard when he responded to the atrocity that a minister said about him with a phrase that is clearly an interference in Spanish internal politics.
Although he has made too many professional mistakes, it is not the same as what Mondino did in China that, although he does not know how to speak as a diplomat should, ends up closing in favor. A warning: luck will not always be in favor of the government on these issues.
