South America is Embracing Beijing’s Science Silk Road
Hello reader!
Nature.com
It follows one article published in the day (08/05), in
the website "nature.com", noting that South America is embracing
Beijing’s science silk road.
Duda Falcão
Article
South America is Embracing Beijing’s Science Silk Road
From a secretive space facility to plans for new
telescopes, South America is starting to see the scientific impacts of China’s
global infrastructure expansion.
By Lucien O. Chauvin & Barbara Fraser
8 may 2019
Even
before Chinese President Xi Jinping unveiled the monumental trade plan now
known as the Belt and Road Initiative to the rest of the world, he was already
selling elements of it to astronomers.
Mónica
Rubio, president of the Chilean Society of Astronomy in Santiago, vividly
recalls sitting in a packed auditorium in August 2012 when Xi made his pitch
during the opening address at a meeting of the International Astronomical Union
in Beijing.
Xi
was still vice-president of China at the time and was a year away from
announcing his ambitious trade plan — a venture later named One Belt, One Road.
But when he spoke to the world’s astronomers, he outlined an expansive view of
China and its connections with the rest of the globe, through both economic development
and cooperation in science and technology. These would later be enshrined
in the even larger Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which now extends across
much of the world. Rubio, an astronomer at the University of Chile in Santiago,
says that Xi talked about investment, supporting scientists and plans for
global development in astronomy with large telescopes. “He offered an
aggressive approach that no one had anticipated.”
That
approach would crystallize quickly in her country and more broadly in South
America, with the 2013 launch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ South America
Center for Astronomy (CASSACA) in the Chilean capital. The following year, in a
watershed speech in Brazil, Xi outlined a ‘1 + 3 + 6’ framework for
Chinese–Latin American relations. It called for one plan, involving the three
engines of trade, investment and financial cooperation, and six fields,
including scientific and technological innovation.
The
BRI and science are deeply intertwined in other regions, too. In south Asia,
the initiative includes investments in
Pakistani universities and in health-care research in Sri Lanka; in Europe,
it has led to technology
partnerships in former communist nations in the eastern part of the
bloc.
Most
governments in South America have got on the bandwagon and view the BRI as a
way to secure investment for roads, power plants and other infrastructure they
cannot afford (see ‘American partners’). But, as in other regions where BRI
projects have started, some scientists and environmentalists have raised
concerns. Although they see benefits such as new telescopes and fellowships for
graduate training, they worry about the lack of environmental oversight — and
that, in the rush to secure funding, governments might not pay close enough
attention to technical and financial guidelines for mitigating impacts.
Source: K. P. Gallagher & M. Myers. China–Latin
America Finance Database (Inter-American Dialogue, 2019).
Pepe
Zhang at the Atlantic Council in Washington DC sees the BRI today more as a
“concept than an initiative, because it encompasses many things and is evolving”.
Zhang,
who is associate director of the council’s China in Latin America programme,
says the central issue for the BRI in the region is infrastructure. But, he
adds, “Going forward, science and technology could become the main component,
and it is only natural that this would be reflected in Belt and Road.”
The
Chinese Way
Rubio
and her colleagues are still coming to terms with what Chinese involvement and
investment mean to science in Chile and more globally. “The relationship with
China is just getting started, and the implementation of the agreements is
going to take time,” says Rubio.
She
says it is important to keep in mind that China has huge resources and that its
agreements are part of long-term strategies. This is not necessarily a bad
thing, but should not be forgotten, adds Rubio.
“When
establishing scientific collaboration with China, you need to recognize that it
is an asymmetrical relationship because of the volume of professionals and the
resources that they can invest, and they come in with a long-term vision,” she
says.
Astrophysicist
Gaspar Galaz, director of the Institute of Astrophysics at the Pontifical
Catholic University of Chile in San Joaquín, says that Chinese participation in
Chile is entirely different to previous collaborations with foreign
universities and research institutes.
“To
be honest, it is kind of like culture shock. The Chinese way of doing things is
top down, which is something new for us. I am not saying that the relationship
has not been positive, but it is different,” he says.
Galaz
says that previous agreements with European and North American institutions
generally began with discussions among academics, moving on to feasibility
studies, proposals and then conversations with government authorities. He says
this was not the case for CASSACA, a joint project of the National Astronomical
Observatory of China and the University of Chile. It was a country-to-country
agreement, and academics were later informed that there would be a partnership
with China.
One
of the more sensitive parts of the agreement is that Chinese scientists are
able to apply for access to observation time that Chile is allotted at
international astronomical facilities located in the country. Chile gets 10% of
each facility’s time.
Credit:
Federico Rios Escobar/NYT/Redux/eyevine
Rubio
says that although there are some complaints from Chilean scientists about
ceding time to non-Chileans, strict requirements apply: Chinese scientists need
to have worked for at least nine consecutive months in the country and must be
affiliated with a Chilean institution.
Anthony
Beasley, director of the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory in
Charlottesville, Virginia, says that China’s telescope deal with Chile is
“quite clever”. He gives the example of the Atacama Large
Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile’s northern Atacama desert, in
which China is not a member. The deal gives Chinese scientists access to the
facility, he says, “without having to strike a complex deal with all the
existing partners and buy a percentage of time. They gain access to Chilean
time in a controlled way. It makes sense.”
The
CASSACA programme is at the heart of China’s scientific work in Chile. It has
20 people, including staff members, visiting scholars and students, and an
annual budget of about US$1.5 million. Galaz says the CASSACA agreement also
came with a fund for Chilean astronomers to spend on research, and to enable
scientists from the nation to visit China. He says there is no fixed amount,
with the annual fund varying between $200,000 and $500,000.
Six
years after its founding, CASSACA is working towards bigger plans. Its director
Zhong Wang, a Chinese astronomer, says there is a possibility of expanding the
facility into a multidisciplinary centre at which Chinese scientists could
collaborate with researchers in Chile and other South American countries on
studies of earthquakes, oceans, Antarctica, deserts, climate change and other
fields.
In
Antofagasta, on Chile’s northern coast, CASSACA has signed a memorandum of
understanding with the Catholic University of the North, which has a large
tract of land in the mountains suitable for a joint observatory. Although there
are no definitive plans, the site could house small to medium optical
telescopes, which Wang says would be a follow-up to China’s
Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST) in
Guizhou province in southwestern China.
“It
is part of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative,” he says of CASSACA, “but we
are doing this mainly for the development of science on the Chinese side. We
think this is the future of Chinese observational astronomy.”
Credit:
Aizar Raldes/AFP/Getty
Spanish,
Mandarin and English all appear on a street sign in La Paz, Bolivia.
|
Working
in Secret
These
developments intrigue Chilean scientists not only because of the scope, but
also because of the silence around them. “We do not know what is going on,
which is one of the things that bothers people,” says Galaz. “I do not think
there is opposition to Chinese participation, which has been positive, but
there is a lot of secrecy.”
Secrecy
around national agreements with China, whether in science or for broader BRI
projects, is something that also unnerves people elsewhere in the region.
Nineteen Latin American countries, mainly small ones, have now signed
non-binding BRI memoranda of understanding with China.
Some
larger countries, including Brazil, have not formally signed up, but already
receive significant Chinese financing, and some projects have been rebranded as
BRI.
China
has made more than $140 billion in loan commitments to countries in the region
since 2005. In 2018, the loans totalled $7.7 billion, the first annual increase
in three years, according to a database maintained by the Inter-American
Dialogue in Washington DC and Boston University’s Global Development Policy
Center in Massachusetts.
Venezuela
has been the largest recipient, with $67.2 billion — much of it for the oil
industry — followed by Brazil, Ecuador and Argentina. Energy is by far the
biggest target of investment, at $96.9 billion, followed by infrastructure,
which received $25.9 billion. China is now Latin America’s second-largest
trading partner, and the region is the second-largest recipient of Chinese
overseas investment.
Whether
these projects involve a river-dredging operation in Peru or power transmission
in Guyana, watchdog groups say they are stonewalled when they try to get
information from Chinese companies and their own governments about projects.
Divergent
Views
Opinions
about the BRI in South America often diverge. Some governments see the
initiative as a chance to complete long-desired infrastructure projects for
which they lack funds. But conservationists and some scientists fear that
construction of roads, railways and dams will spell disaster for fragile
ecosystems such as those of the Amazon rainforest. Highways and access roads
accelerate deforestation, fragmenting the forest and threatening to disrupt the
basin’s hydrological cycle, says biologist William Laurance at James Cook
University in Cairns, Australia.
Credit:
Cris Bouroncle/AFP/Getty
Chinese-funded
oil operations in the Amazon sparked a 2017 protest at Peru’s Chinese embassy.
|
“I
think that the biggest problem with a lot of these projects is that they’re
being pushed through very fast,” says Laurance, who studies the impacts of
infrastructure projects in the Amazon basin, as well as the BRI around the
world. “Things that shouldn’t be approved are being approved.”
In
China, after a period of rapid growth, “There’s a focus now at home on what
you’d call a more sustainable approach to development,” says Rebecca Ray, a
postdoctoral fellow at Boston’s Global Development Policy Center. Overseas,
however, “It appears to be exporting the same model that has been in place in
China over the past few decades.”
The
China Development Bank, one of the main lenders involved in the BRI, lacks the
environmental and social safeguards that Western lenders, such as the World
Bank and Inter-American Development Bank, have drafted in recent years. Those
have arisen under pressure from environmentalists, Indigenous groups and rights
organizations, according to a report published by the Global Development Policy
Center and the University of the Pacific in Lima (see go.nature.com/2jukvgi).
Instead, China adheres to the host country’s rules, which might not be strongly
enforced, says Ray.
Similar
concerns have emerged about some science and technology investments. The most
startling example today is in Argentina, where non-profit groups monitoring
government policies have objected to Chinese projects, fearing the long-term
economic, environmental and political impact they could have. Organizations say
they have not succeeded in obtaining information about these projects from the
Argentinian and Chinese governments.
One
project that has sparked broad international media interest is a $50-million
Chinese-funded satellite and space mission control centre in the country’s
Patagonia region that had a role in landing a Chinese rover on the far side of
the Moon in January. The bilateral agreement signed in 2012 gives Argentina
access to antenna time at the control centre, but local groups maintain that
there is no evidence of this or other benefits for Argentina.
María
Marta Di Paola, research director at Argentina’s Environment and Natural
Resources Foundation, a think tank in Buenos Aires, says requests about the
space centre are met with silence from Argentinian and Chinese authorities
alike. Nature tried repeatedly without success to obtain
information from the centre about its activities.
“All
we know is that this is a Chinese project behind a big fence and highly
protected. Truthfully, it is like looking into a foreign country on your own
soil,” says Di Paola.
She
says its real purpose is also unclear, despite assurances from authorities that
the complex does not have a military use. “The agreement was signed in 2012,
but only in 2016 was the non-military clause added. It raises many questions
that have never been answered,” she says, including the possibility of
financial penalties if Argentina’s government were to make changes to the
contract.
A
similar collaboration, but without the same level of secrecy, has formed in
Brazil, where the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and Brazil’s National
Institute for Space Research (INPE) in São Paulo inaugurated the China–Brazil
Joint Laboratory for Space Weather in August 2014. The project provides
real-time data about processes and disturbances in Earth’s upper atmosphere to
researchers in both countries, says Joaquim Costa, general manager of the INPE
space-weather programme. China also funds nine fellowships for scholars to conduct
research at CAS facilities. (saiba mais sobre esta parceria aqui)
Zhang
at the Atlantic Council says a growing focus on science and technology in the
region should not come as a surprise as China’s role in South America expands.
Meanwhile, its own economy is evolving as its leaders work to rebrand the
country as a technology and innovations powerhouse.
“You
have more Chinese companies internationalizing, and you have a country that is
embracing technology,” he says, “so it is only natural that there is a science
and technology component reflected internationally.”
Fonte: Site Nature.com - https://www.nature.com
Comentário: Bom leitor, eu de minha parte acho que toda
parceria entre nações ela só e valida se for para desenvolvimento tecnológico
ou de pesquisa conjunto para se obter resultados não alcançados antes pelas
partes, e não para sobrepor algo já em desenvolvimento em ambos os países. Por isto é de crucial importância que as
partes saibam o que querem e sabiam como negociar os seu objetivos junto ao
parceiro em questão. A América Latina está sendo sumariamente invadida pela
tecnologia chinesa e no que diz respeito especificamente ao PEB e a Astronomia
Brasileira é preciso que os nossos gestores saibam como negociar e o que
negociar com a China. Enfim... se assim for,
a parceria poderá ser bastante frutífera nessas áreas. Aproveito para agradecer ao nosso leitor F. Carlos M. Jr. pelo envio deste artigo.
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