Asia and Latin America in Globalization: information capacity, transpacific trade, and smuggling
[eng] This dissertation explores the multiple transformations in Asia and Latin America during two significant waves of globalization, focusing on institutional evolution, trade dynamics, and illicit economic activities. By examining China’s institutional changes under foreign influence in 1864-1938...
| Autor: | |
|---|---|
| Tipo de recurso: | tesis doctoral |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2025 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Universidad de Barcelona |
| Repositorio: | Dipòsit Digital de la UB |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:diposit.ub.edu:2445/220283 |
| Acceso en línea: | https://hdl.handle.net/2445/220283 http://hdl.handle.net/10803/694193 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Història econòmica Comerç internacional Globalització (Economia) Economic history International trade Globalization (Economics) |
| Sumario: | [eng] This dissertation explores the multiple transformations in Asia and Latin America during two significant waves of globalization, focusing on institutional evolution, trade dynamics, and illicit economic activities. By examining China’s institutional changes under foreign influence in 1864-1938, the evolution of transpacific trade between Asia and Latin America in 1876- 1938, and the smuggling networks involving Bolivia, Chile, and China in 1980-2020, this work contributes to a deeper understanding of how globalization shapes and is shaped by peripheral regions. Chapter 2 introduces a new approach to explore the information capacity of the Chinese Maritime Customs from 1864 to 1938. It employs a mirror analysis by comparing Chinese Maritime Customs’ international trade data with that of China’s major trading partners: the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan. Findings reveal that Chinese Maritime Customs’ improvements in measuring foreign trade frequently coincided with its institutional reforms. The results highlight that these improvements were not uniform across different regions. Specifically, the persistent discrepancies between Chinese Maritime Customs’ and Japanese data underscore the influence of geopolitics since late 19th century. Chapter 3 provides a novel trade series on trade between Asia and Latin America between 1876 and 1938. It shows that the role of Asia in Latin America’s foreign trade was marginal in volumes, but the composition of Latin American imports from Asia reveals clues to the persistence of colonial links across the Pacific. While traditional products such as textiles, tea, and porcelain maintained a constant presence in Latin American imports, new trade patterns emerged in this period. The differences in the Asian countries as exporters could be explained by the disparities in their industrial development and foreign trade policies. The persistence of consumption patterns and influence of Asian immigrants also help to understand the continuities and changes in Latin America’s import from Asia. Chapter 4 addresses the smuggling in Bolivia’s imports of Chinese products via Chile in the recent trade boom. A mirror analysis is conducted by comparing Bolivia’s import data with export data of China and Chile. The analysis identifies substantial over-reporting in Bolivia’s declaration of imports from China and under-reporting in Bolivia’s declaration of imports from Chile. The results also indicate that the largest discrepancies appear in textile yarn, fabrics, made-up articles, rubber manufactures, road vehicles, telecommunications equipment, electrical machinery, articles of footwear, apparel and clothing accessories. It suggests that Bolivia has imported these Chinese products through re-exportation from other transit countries. Additionally, Chile is an important entrepôt country for Bolivia’s imports and part of this transit trade occurs through unofficial or illegal channels. In summary, Chapter 2 provides a new approach of foreign trade data mirror analysis to measure the information capacity of Chinese Maritimes Customs. This contributes to the literature about how the globalization affects the institutional quality in a peripheral country like the 19th-century China. Chapter 3 offers a novel trade dataset between Asia and Latin America from 1876 to 1938, highlighting the persistence of the colonial trade compositions and the emergence of new trade patterns. This contributes to the research on the transpacific trade in a globalization wave dominated by Atlantic economies. Chapter 4 offers a quantitative estimation of the smuggling in the transpacific and intraregional trade between Bolivia, Chile and China in the recent decades. It highlights the significant size of the potential smuggling activities in Bolivia’s imports from Chile. It also contributes to the understanding of the upsurge of marginal economic groups under the global trade boom. |
|---|