In the trilateral relations among China, the US and Mexico, the later two seem more sensitive to the role of the third part, say China, in North America. The psychological phenomenon to some degree may reflect the impact of the geographic distance. As neighbors in North America, the US and Mexico probably are more easily affected by the negative events in their relations. Thus, it is reasonable to see that the two countries are more suspicious to other players appearing in the region, for they worry that new actors in the region will further complicate their relations and make their relations more difficult to control.

The psychology, though understandable, is neither good for the two countries nor for the new comers to North and Latin America, because in the age of globalization, it is inevitable for more actors involving into regional affairs. If the countries try to resist the trend of globalization, they will get nothing but lose the chance of better development. Therefore, the paper argues that China, the US and Mexico can benefit more if they enhance policy coordination and collaboration in the context of regional cooperation. China has no intention to harm US and Mexican economic interests or to challenge the political order in Latin America. What it wants is just to join in the development of Latin America and make more friends there. With the objective recognition of China’s role in Latin America, the three countries may cooperate more actively with each other and achieve an all-win outcome through the interactions.

I. China-Mexico Relations and Regional Cooperation
The end of Cold War and West-East confrontation brings about more favorite environment for economic globalization. Globalization is the major feature of the age, which means that countries have connected with each other more closely and the cross-border flowing of capitals, goods and personnel has become an integral part of life. In handling the tide of globalization, some countries make special arrangements in their region so that their interests can be better served. Regional cooperation is used to manage and even control the flows of capital, goods and personnel in the region, but it seems not to be the mission of regional cooperation to cut off the cross-border flowing of production elements. Regional cooperation is not a measure against or to resist globalization. It is just an instrument developed by countries to adjust the proceedings of globalization. It is wrong to equal regional cooperation with exclusiveness. There is no reason to refuse new friends and partners in regional cooperation.

Regional cooperation, especially the arrangement of North American free trade zone, can substantially influence the calculations of the US, Mexico and China to their relations. North American free trade zone was established in 1990s. It is composed of three big countries in North America, the US, Canada and Mexico, and more importantly, the three economies complement with each other for they are in different economic stages and have different advantages. The US, Mexico and Canada form a good combination of market, manufacture and energy, through which Mexico as a major supplier of manufactures benefits a lot from the cooperation. However, North America is not an island isolated from world economy. On January 1 1995, World Trade Organization (WTO) began to work. The US as a global power and the largest economic body in the world cannot constrain itself to be a regional market. It is almost inevitable for North American countries to face more players from other parts of the world.

Local countries may find that their shares in regional market shrinking with the coming of outside countries under the framework of WTO, but on the other side outside countries can also bring about new opportunities to the region. For example in the relations between China and Mexico, the two countries may compete to some degree for exporting to the US, but the relations between China and Mexico are much larger than their export to the US market. China as an emerging power and a representative of a region enjoying robust economic development definitely means more to Mexico.

Firstly, the adjustment of China’s economic structure may help change the wrong impression of China-Mexico trade relations and let Mexico find more interests in economic cooperation with China. In China-Mexico relations, a usual understanding is that the two countries compete with each other in the US market because their products have high similarities. However, the impression might not be that correct.  Some scholars have pointed out that the competition between China and Mexico is exaggerated. The two countries have more areas to complement with each other rather than to compete.[1] Moreover, China really does not want to involve into trade conflicts with other developing countries. It is trying to change the mode of its economic development and update the component of its export. With more dependent on its own domestic market and supplying more high-value products to the world, China hopes that it can further coordinate the division of production with Mexico and other developing countries. In addition, China can also provide market and investor for Mexico. Therefore, it is wrong to narrowly define China-Mexico economic relations by their competitive part of trade in the US market. China’s increasing engagement with Mexico and Latin America can enlarge the cake of interests and benefits all more.

As important as to the plus side, China’s involvement into North and Latin America can also help Mexico reduce the negative effects of North American cooperation. Generally speaking, NAFTA is an arrangement beneficial for all of the three participants, but this does not mean that everything is beautiful in the cooperation.[2] In the case of Mexico, it does benefit from exporting manufactures to the US and receive many investments from the US, but it also suffers in some areas for instance the industry of agriculture. What is even more questionable but intangible is the political influence from the US. When Mexico increasingly relies on the US market, the US has more leverage to affect Mexico, which may awkward Mexico in international affairs. For example, in the administration of President Fox, to close its relations with the US, Mexico distanced itself with Latin American left-wing governments which have traditional friendship with Mexico, such as Cuba and Venezuela.[3] By the measure, Mexico to some extent pleased the US, but its influence in Latin America decreased and it did not fundamentally resolve the critical problems between Mexico and the US on immigration and drugs. Therefore, the over-dependence on the US market can only push Mexico into disadvantage in its relations with the US. Mexico needs outside players to balance the influence of the US. Diversifying its economic cooperation with China and other countries from this point of view is good for Mexico.

Thirdly, China also can be a bridge for Mexico to engage with East Asian countries. East Asia is a region attracting global attentions for its good performance in economic field. The region does not only keep a high speed of growth but also has a big market with great potentials, because there are more than one billion people in the region who are entering into a stage so-called “middle class”. Therefore, the US is increasing its investment and shifting its attention to Asia and it shall also be the interest of Mexico to share the fast development in East Asia. However, it seems that Mexico has not found an effective way to participate into East Asian cooperation. Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) is just a forum of the leaders and the US seems less active to involve Mexico into its new favorite the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Mexico has to depend on itself to step into the west part of the Pacific, and thus it will be even more important for Mexico to strengthen its relations with East Asian countries. China as a major country in East Asia has intensive economic and trade relations with local countries. China and Mexico can help each other in intra-regional cooperation.
On the whole, China and Mexico have more common interests to cooperate in the age of globalization. Their divergences in trade and other areas are true but can be managed on the basis of mutual respect and mutual concession. The two countries should recognize their importance in regional and global cooperation and make joint efforts to build up and maintain a healthy and mutually beneficial relationship. 

II. US-China Relations in Regional Cooperation
The US concerns over China's role in Latin America, especially from the perspective of geopolitical competition, but comparing with the concerns, the US may has greater interests in keeping close cooperation with both Mexico and China.

Firstly, economic cooperation with China is irreversible and beneficial to the US. After the normalization of China-US relationship, economic relations developed fast. In the past 40 years, China-US trade volumes have risen from 2.5 billion US dollars to about 450 billion US dollars in 2011. Both China and the US now are the second largest trade partners of the other side. In addition, China in the past 10 years has become the export market with the highest growth rate in the US partners. Although there are complaints from the US side on the trade deficit with China, the US cares about its shares in the Chinese market. What the US wants is not to weaken its economic relations with China but to readjust the mode of China-US economic cooperation.

In the past decades, China and the US economically have formed some sort of cooperation, in which China supplies low-price and good-quality goods for the US market while the US moved its manufacture to countries with lower human cost and attracted China to buy its treasury bonds. However, the 2008 financial crisis alerted the two countries that their mode of economic cooperation cannot sustain any longer. For the US side, it cannot keep the high consumption while the domestic saving rate is very low. The US wants to revive its manufacture and build up its economy on a more solid basis. On the Chinese side, it also recognizes that over-dependence on foreign trade is not healthy to its economy. China wants to update the model of its economic development, reducing energy consumption, increasing the values of its production and encouraging the growth of domestic market.

Thus, the cooperative mode of China and the US in economic field is in a transition. In the process, there might be some uncertainties and conflicts emerging in the relationship just like what we see at current stage, but in the long run the two countries have no choice but to cooperate with each other, because their interests have intertwined so deeply that no side can afford the confrontation with the other side. For Mexico, the transition of China-US economic relations might also be a good opportunity. The three countries can use the chance to review and re-design their cooperation.

Secondly, the US pays a close attention to China’s engagement with Latin American countries, but it knows that China does not really have the capability to challenge US position in the American continent.

It is true that China-Latin American relations developed fast in past ten years, especially reflecting in three aspects: Firstly, China has established connections with the whole continental, not only developing relations with major powers in the region but also strengthening cooperation with many medium countries and regional organizations, although there are still some countries without diplomatic relations with Mainland China because of the Taiwan issue. Secondly, China began to carry out all-round cooperation with Latin American nations, with more and more dimensions emerging in China-Latin American relations including tourism, cultural exchanges, security, climate change and others. Thirdly, topics between China and Latin American countries have gone beyond bilateral and regional level. They began to exchange views on world order and global affairs. Therefore, China believes its relations with Latin America have “strategic importance.”[4] China-Latin America relationship shows a leapfrog development in the new century, pointed out by some Chinese scholars.[5]

China’s increasingly strengthening its relations with Latin American countries, however, does not mean it has the intention to involve into geopolitical competition with the US. China’s major cooperation with Latin American countries is still in the areas related to economic development. China does want to expand its exchanges with Latin American countries in other areas including education, culture, politics, security and else, because China believes that single-dimensional relations are not healthy and cannot sustain. China-Latin American economic cooperation needs to be complemented and supported by their friendship in other areas. Therefore, from Chinese perspective, developing a comprehensive relationship with Latin American countries has little relations with strategic or military competition.

In fact, China’s engagement with Latin American countries in security field is quite limited, comparing with their economic and political relations. The Chinese military just began its exchanges with Latin American counterparts. There have been no regular and institutional arrangements between the Chinese and Latin American militaries, let alone to say common actions of the two militaries. Thus, the real situation of China-Latin American military relationship is not that it develops too fast, but how it can catch up with the rapid growth of China-Latin American relations in other fields. Therefore, China in Latin America is not in a position pursuing strategic competition with the US. What the US really concerns might be the catalytic effects caused by China's presence in Latin America.

In the new century, Latin America seemed to enter into a new round of transition. Neo-liberalist economic reform in 1990s caused heavy loss in some Latin American countries and impelled the region to explore new paths of development. In parallel to the new development in economic field, political landscape in Latin America changed too. Neo-left parties took power in some major countries, and the international relations in the region and regional cooperation readjusted in accordance with the new political and economic situations. Under that background, quite a few Latin American countries take a policy distancing their positions with those of the US, which alerts the US and makes it even more sensitive to engagement between Latin American countries and outside powers. This is also important reason for the US to concern China’s role in the region.

Thirdly, the US is rebuilding its advantages over regional powers. Since the end of World War II, the US has been the major power in world affairs, but in different periods of time it takes different ways to keep and enhance its power. For example, in the age of Cold War, the US regarded the Soviet Union as the major challenger and constituted global alliances to counter the threat of the Soviet Union. After the end of Cold War, the US moved its attention from ideological confrontation to global challenges such as proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and terrorism and tried to mobilize global forces to deal with the problems. In the process of countering terrorism, however, the US recognized that it over-stretched its strategic resources. While terrorism threat was controlled to some extent, the US began to readjust its strategic focus. It placed revitalizing economy as the priority and then “pivoted” to Asia.

When the US re-focused its attention to Asia, it found that balance of power in the region had tilted in favor of China. In the first eight years of the 21st century, regional cooperation in East Asia developed quickly. China, through the platforms of ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian National) 1 and ASEAN 3, strengthened its economic cooperation with ASEAN countries. China and ASEAN countries launched a free trade zone covering 1.9 billion people on January 1 of 2010. It is expected that the free trade zone will become the third largest one in the world following the Europe Union and the NAFTA. In addition to cooperation with Southeast Asian countries, China also developed its relations with its Northern and Eastern neighbors. China-Russia relations keep good and stable. The two countries basically take similar positions in world affairs and their cooperation in Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) caused a lot of attention from the US. Besides Russia, China walked closely to two important allies of the US in East Asia, Japan and Republic of Korea (ROK). The three countries began a process of leaders’ summit in 2008 and tended to build up a free trade zone among them.

In face of the new situation in East Asia, the US fells great pressure from the growth of China. It tried to retrieve the balance in the region. First of all, the US fully used the disputes between China and other countries in the region, including the divergences on the North Korean issues and the territorial conflicts in South China Sea and on the Diaoyu Islands issues, to isolate China. China’s relations with many regional countries in East Asia deteriorated in the two years. Secondly, the US used the security tensions in East Asia to consolidate and strengthen its alliance system in East Asia. The US encouraged its allies to develop military forces and take more military responsibilities. The measures on one side pander to what the hard-lines in some of US allies want so that they will even more closely follow US policies, on the other side can also reduce the security burdens of the US which is especially important for the US in current fiscal difficulties. Thirdly and more importantly, the US tried to re-schedule the regional architecture so that its leadership can be supported and assured in the region. The Obama Administration changed the position of the Bush Administration. It not only participated into the East Asia Summit, but also actively pushed forward the project of Trans-Pacific Partnership, through which the US want to regulate Asia-Pacific economic cooperation in the standards and rules set by the US and at the same time weaken the economic influence of China to the region.

Therefore, the US policy to China has two sides. On one side, US interests intertwine deeply with those of China in almost every aspect and neither of them wants to confront with the other side, but on the other side the US wants to regulate and constrain China’s behaviors according to US standard and the two countries have divergences and competitions on many issues. The complex feature of China-US relations should also be considered in the discussion of China-US-Mexico cooperation in regional affairs.

III. Observations on China-US-Mexico Cooperation
On the basis of above analyses, we see three important features in China-Mexico-US relations. Firstly, in the relations among China, Mexico and the US, China-Mexico relations are the weakest one. Mexico is very close with the US and the two countries actually inter-depend on each other. It is true that the US is stronger in the realistic calculations of power, but on many issues including trade, immigration, border security and others, lives of American people are deeply influenced by its relations with Mexico and therefore Mexico is really relevant to the US. In China-US relations, the interdependence exists too. The two countries may have a lot of differences and divergences with each other, but their common interests are even bigger and neither of them wants to confront with the other side. In comparison with the two relations, the development of China-Mexico relations is still in the initial stage. Restrained by geographic distance, language and other elements, China-Mexico exchanges remain in some circles such as business, diplomats, scholars and etc. China-Mexico relations obviously is the short side in the trilateral relations among the US, Mexico and China.

Secondly, the US is the only country among the three playing critical roles in both regions at the two sides of the Pacific. US President Barack Obama claimed that he is the first Pacific President of the US. It is clear that the US want to put more emphases on Asia-Pacific, but does it mean that the US want to promote the exchanges and connections between the Asian part and the American part of the Pacific? From the economic point of view, it might be true because closer cooperation between Asian and American countries can enlarge market, bring about more opportunities and further optimize the distributions of resources, but the political calculation is totally different. The US is at its relatively weaker stage. At the moment, that it most worries is the fast development of potential challengers, and it is hard to image that US will create chances for regional powers such as China and Mexico to go closer. For the US, an ideal option is to restrain regional powers and let them support the international order led by the US. Therefore, to the US, US-Mexico-China relations are the US centered and Mexico. It wants Mexico and China to be the partners in either side of the Pacific.

So, from the above analysis, it is clear that the third feature of China-Mexico-US relations is that the trilateral connections among the three are relatively limited. Of course, there are some actions involved all of the three countries. From negative point of view, for example, China had to face the joint complaints in WTO from the US and Mexico in 2007 on the Chinese industrial subsidies China. Earlier, Mexico also complained to the US on China’s textile export to the US market. On the positive side, in 2006, China, the US and Mexico held meetings in China to discuss how to carry out and strengthen cooperation among the three under the framework of NAFTA. And the in the same year, the three countries also studied the possibility to open up a sea route for China’s export to the US via Mexico. Moreover, the three countries may have even more chances in future to cooperate for example on global issues such as climate change and etc. Therefore, there are areas for the three countries to interact and cooperate with each other, but in general the trilateral interactions are not the main feature of the three countries’ relations. Basically, the three countries interact through three bilateral relations and among which China-Mexico relations are the relatively weaker one.

After understanding the features of China-Mexico-US relations and development of globalization and regional cooperation, the author believes that the critical to build up and maintain a stable and healthy relationship among the three countries is to have a better China-Mexico relationship. China and Mexico are important countries at the two sides of the Pacific and in world affairs as emerging powers. The increase of China-Mexico cooperation will place the interactions among the three countries on a more balanced power base.

To improve China-Mexico cooperation, China may make efforts on the following aspects. Firstly, how to build up a mutually beneficial economic relationship is the central part of China-Mexico relations. Just like what argued in the above of the paper, China and Mexico have taken many measures to coordinate their policies and their trade disputes actually are not as serious as imaged, but the measures are not enough. In accordance with the “strategic importance” nature of China-Mexico relations, China should have a bigger blueprint for its economic cooperation with Mexico. Moreover, China should encourage its academic and research communities to communicate with their counterparts of Mexico to plan proposals for bilateral cooperation. By the measures, China and Mexico may accumulate more consensuses on their cooperation and make joint efforts for the same direction.

Secondly, China must pay more attentions to people-to-people relations between the two countries. Without good relations between the two societies, deepening Chinese-Mexican economic and political cooperation cannot go far. In addition, more and more Chinese people and companies are entering Mexico and Latin America. In the long run, those people will tie China and Mexico and Latin America more closely, but at current stage, they need the government’s help to make them familiar with and know better about Mexico and Latin America.

Thirdly, China should further expand its dialogues and cooperation with Mexico on regional and global affairs. For China and Mexico, it is too narrow to define their relations in economic fields or to look at themselves as two average countries. Both China and Mexico are developing countries, but they do have influence to regional and world affairs. It seems correct to encourage China and Mexico to consider their relations more from the perspective of regional and world cooperation. They can more deeply exchange their views on what kind of regional and world orders that they would like to see in future. With a common prospect for future, the two countries may find more areas to cooperate with each other.

On the whole, when China increasingly participates in the development of Latin America, China will have more chances to meet US and Mexican interests in the region. To avoid conflicts and reduce suspicions, China has taken many measures to coordinate its policies with the US and Mexico, but the efforts are never enough. China has to further improve its relationship with Mexico and the US. From this point of view, regional cooperation might be a new angle worthy of more studies.

（The paper was published in Enrique Dussel Peters, Adrian H. Hearn and Harley Shaiken (eds.): China and the New Triangular Relationships in the Americas: China and the Future of U.S.-Mexico Relations, Mexico City, Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2013.）

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