We are currently experiencing a profound shift in the global system. The growing role of China and Asia on the global stage, as well as the resurgence of Eurasia as a major global geopolitical chessboard, reflects a critical change in the map of world power with profound implications for our region. This shift expresses the crisis of a historical cycle of capitalist hegemony led by the United States since World War II, in which the region was a strategic pillar, a central sphere of influence for the hegemon, or its "backyard." The rise of China is the central phenomenon that highlights this change.

In Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), these shifts in the geography of power coincided with the rise of governments critical of neoliberalism and the unipolar world. These processes go hand in hand: the rise of China and other emerging powers, which contributed to a scenario of relative multipolarity and new development prospects, are part of the same reaction against US-Atlantic hegemony, neoliberal financial globalization, and the Washington Consensus as the only possible alternative. History was reborn, and in just 20 years, a new map of power was drawn, offering greater room for maneuver for the peoples of the Global South. Moments of crisis in the world order and hegemonic transitions create historical opportunities for the unfolding of processes of insubordination in the peripheries and semi-peripheries of the system, whose peoples seek to break, modify, or weaken relations of dependency and undertake development projects with greater relative autonomy. Therefore, it is essential to identify the underlying trends of China's rise and its impact on the current world and regional order.

The very increase in Chinese demand for raw materials produced in Latin America and the Caribbean impacted global and regional trade relations and explains the rise in commodity prices that sustained the redistributive policies of progressive, national, and populist governments. Furthermore, the commercial and investment weight of the Asian giant disrupted the traditional economic dependence on the North Atlantic powers.

As an emerging economy, China's rise is based on production, while declining powers tend to maintain their supremacy through military and financial power. China experienced average annual growth of 9% over the last four decades and grew at an average of 6% during the nearly 30-year Maoist period following the 1949 revolution. While the Asian giant developed a hyper-expansion of the real economy in the last decade, accounting for 50% of overall global economic growth, the Global North experienced relative stagnation, which hit Europe and Japan hardest (and which have not recovered from the 2008-2009 crisis), while the United States grew slightly more, but at the cost of increasing the financialization of its economy.

China's GDP, measured by purchasing power parity, exceeds that of the US by $4,3 trillion, making it the world's largest economy in these terms since 2016. Furthermore, since 2013, it has become the world's largest exporter, increasing its share of global exports from 3,16% in 2000 (at current prices) to 12,71% in 2021 (World Bank), and has solidified its position as the main trading partner for more than half the world's countries. Another key aspect is how the domestic market has become the engine of Chinese growth; some data illustrate this: average industrial wages have tripled in the last decade.

In the global arena, Beijing is already vying for top positions in the most complex economic sectors. The transnationalization of its companies, the internationalization of the yuan, and indigenous technology are gaining ground in the new world economy. In geoeconomic and geopolitical terms, the initiative known as the Belt and Road Initiative involves more than 150 countries. Beijing is establishing counter-hegemonic partnerships with countries such as Russia, Iran, and the Global South. It supports the strengthening of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation as a central security body in Eurasia. It promotes the BRICS as a forum of emerging powers that counters the "old" G7 and is developing multilateral financial institutions that overshadow those controlled by the United States. In the defense sector, it is also developing capabilities within its military complex that have challenged US primacy in the Asia-Pacific region, a key arena in the global power struggle.

China's economic development is a central axis for understanding China's strategic relationship and relevance to our region. First, trade between China and Latin America reached $452 billion in 2021 (double the amount in 2017), solidifying its position as South America's main trading partner, a stark contrast to the relative decline of the United States.

Secondly, in terms of investment, Latin America became the second-largest recipient of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) from the Asian giant, accounting for 14%, after Asia itself. From 2003 to 2017, China invested over US$110.000 billion, and estimated Chinese FDI increased from an average annual amount of US$1.357 billion between 2001 and 2009 to an average of US$10.817 billion between 2010 and 2016. Beijing plans to increase investment to US$250.000 billion by 2025, and among the investment projects are large-scale strategic infrastructure projects for the region (dams, nuclear power plants, interoceanic canals, transcontinental railways) that would give Beijing significant influence and are considered "threats" by Washington.

Third, regarding financial matters, a key indicator of China's influence in the region is that its state-owned banks have lent more resources to Latin American and Caribbean countries than the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) combined this decade. Furthermore, as part of its strategy to internationalize the yuan and expand its financial influence, China has signed currency swap agreements with Argentina and Brazil and established the first financial center for the internationalization of the yuan in Santiago, Chile.

Another key dimension is geopolitics. In this respect, China, despite not seeking conflict with the United States, has counterbalanced its power. The importance and support that Beijing has given to the relationship with CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) and the growing commitment of the region's countries to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) should be highlighted. The BRI positions China as a key player in the region's global megaproject and already includes 20 Latin American members.

For the reasons stated above, the proposed topic is of critical importance to the region, and therefore we propose the following topics to address it:

1) China's rise in the world system: Inter-state hierarchies, geopolitical changes and global capitalism

2) China, accumulation pattern and innovation system: State capitalism or market socialism

3) China and the emergence of Eurasia

4) China and the Global South

5) China and Latin America and the Caribbean: economic and strategic relations, the challenges for the region, the problem of dependency and primary commodity dependency, and the dispute in the US "backyard".

6) China, geopolitical regions and poles of power. War, conflicts, relative multipolarity and imperialism

7) The Chinese political model and its internal contradictions

8) Long-term, Sino-centric systems and the modern world system: contradictions and perspectives of the 21st century

Before the "century of humiliation" began in China with the Opium Wars, Napoleon Bonaparte, in a prophetic statement of 1816, declared: "China is a sleeping giant. Let it sleep, for when it awakens, the world will be shaken." This invites us to consider China's rise from a long-term perspective and as a symptom of the crisis of the modern capitalist world system, which, through imperialism and colonialism, managed to conquer and subsume all human civilizations.

Until the 18th century, China was the world's leading economic region for almost two millennia. At the beginning of the 19th century, it accounted for between 30 and 35% of global GDP, boasting a strong state, an efficient bureaucracy, significant infrastructure projects, and a widespread and deeply rooted market economy. Therefore, China's decline, which began in the 19th century, was actually a two-century-long standstill, a rather exceptional phenomenon in world history, closely linked to the invasion by Western powers and its incorporation as a periphery into the modern capitalist world system—its transformation into a "hypercolony," in the words of Sun Yat-sen.

China's rise and economic dynamism cannot be reduced to its adherence to neoliberal capitalism and/or its status as an epiphenomenon of globalization and the offshoring of production from the Global North, as much of Western academia explains. China's current position is linked, first and foremost, to the significant levels of autonomy, political and strategic strength, and basic well-being in health and education it achieved as a result of the 1949 revolution. Then came the takeoff with the reforms initiated in 1978, which attracted capital from the Chinese diaspora, absorbed lower levels of Japanese outsourcing, developed significant communal and state-run economic networks, fostered market reforms, and later, absorbed large volumes of Western capital under its own conditions, ultimately transforming it into the world's leading industrial powerhouse. This was accomplished through its own unique project and a singular hybridization of production modes. Further analysis of this topic can make a fundamental contribution to dependency theories and the study of center-periphery dynamics in the world system, the place of the Global South, and the implications of its insubordination.

The characteristics of the contemporary global situation, with its cyclical and secular trends, reveal a bifurcation of power and a scenario of structural conflicts for the coming years. The current historical transition of the world system manifests itself, among other ways, as a structural capitalist crisis and a crisis of the global geopolitical order. They are two sides of the same coin.

On the one hand, there is the financialization of capital, the crisis of the Atlanticist axis's hegemony in the world economy, and the decline of the "maritime powers" that traditionally led modern capitalist civilization, centered primarily in Western Europe and currently under US leadership. On the other hand, there is the reorientation of economic dynamism toward China and East Asia, the rise of regionalism, and the emergence of hinterlands as potential new geopolitical foundations for the world economy and the construction of a multipolar world system. In this sense, the rise of the Asia-Pacific region in general, and of China in particular, constitutes one of the central phenomena of the crisis of US hegemony, as it challenges the existing international division of labor, the global power of transnational (financial) capital and its institutions, and the hierarchies of the interstate system.

The growing role of China and the Asia-Pacific region on the global stage reflects a critical shift in the world power map with implications for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). This shift expresses the crisis of a historical cycle of capitalist hegemony led by the United States since World War II and, therefore, a historic opportunity for the peoples of Latin America and the Global South in their quest to break free from historical relations of dependency and colonialism and undertake more autonomous development projects. For this reason, it is essential to identify the underlying trends in the rise of China and the Asia-Pacific region and their impact on the current world and regional order.

The rise of China and the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean regions, as well as the revitalization of Eurasia, raise two fundamental questions that warrant investigation and give rise to significant theoretical debates: A) Is the end of the primacy of the fundamental forces of the West in the world system a definitive and structural trend? This question is compounded by a deeper one: Are we witnessing a definitive crisis of capitalist modernity as a historical system? B) On the other hand, the rise of China poses another systemic challenge: What would the incorporation of one-fifth of the world's population into the center of the world system entail (something impossible under the current system)? Would this include other giants of the Global South, such as India? C) In this sense, what does the deployment of a continental giant in the global economy and politics under a hybrid development model, or perhaps a new mode of production, mean? This mode of production doesn't fit within the Western capitalist framework because collective land ownership is maintained, the core sectors of the economy are controlled by large state-owned strategic enterprises, and there is a strong presence of collectively owned village and town enterprises that are among the main employers in the economy. Therefore, this transition is not simply a transfer of power from a Western, capitalist state to a stronger, more dynamic one, initiating a new hegemonic cycle of the modern world system. This also raises various research and prospective questions about future scenarios: What development model will prevail in China? Is its rise sustainable, and/or can it be blocked? What does China's rise imply for the Global South and the Global North? What types of world orders and polarities might emerge? Is a New Bandung emerging?

As happens when a hegemonic cycle enters a crisis, a period of global disorder, wars, economic crises, and strategic bifurcations opens up. Faced with this situation, various studies formulate the famous idea of ​​the "Thucydides Trap." In fact, we are already experiencing a trade war, cyberwars, technological wars, lawfare, etc., to which we must add the proliferation of different war scenarios, suggesting a hybrid and fragmented world war. What are the implications of this trend toward the intensification of global tensions between the old dominant power and emerging powers? What does the rise of China on the world map mean? Does it represent an emerging imperialist power and the next space for accumulation in historical capitalism, or does it signify something else? What place does Latin America have in this transition and in relation to the rise of China?

The rise of China, the reconfiguration of the world power map, and its relationship with the region compels us to a great intellectual effort of study, theoretical reflection, and conceptual creation, based on some fundamental categories of our Latin American and Global South tradition of thought: dependency, center-periphery dynamics, historical capitalism and capitalist mode of production, models or patterns of development, hegemony and cycles of hegemony, imperialism, economic cycles, historical-spatial transition, world order and world system, global north and global south, among others.