When Global East Meets Global West

The connections between East Asia and Latin America date to the colonial period, when the Spanish and Portuguese empires began trading with the “East Indies.” Over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, relations between the two regions expanded due to the large-scale labor migration from Japan and China to Latin America and China's political outreach during the Maoist period. At the same time, the Japanese government prompted reverse migration to address Japan's labor shortage during the 1980s bubble economy, which prompted Japanese Brazilians and Peruvians to "return" to Japan so that the country could maintain the myth of being a homogeneous nation. As first Japan, and then Korea and China became major producers of consumer goods, and as Latin America became a producer of raw materials for East Asia manufacturers, the nature of the relations between Latin America and East Asia has shifted in a variety of ways. For example, competition for resources and for diplomatic recognition have led China to extend the Belt and Road Initiative as well as other soft power and cultural diplomacy strategies to the region. By the same token, East Asian cultural products such as Korean and Japanese music and art have become increasingly popular in Latin America as have Latin American music and dance in East Asia.