BY CATALINA CAMANOAMATO
Secretary of Culture and Sports, Unión de Trabajadores de Prensa de Buenos Aires (UTPBA), Argentina
Writing about China before experiencing it firsthand is, at once, both a challenge and an opportunity. The challenge lies in approaching such a vast reality without becoming trapped in the interpretive frameworks through which the West has long understood the world. The opportunity lies precisely there: recognizing that our political, economic, and cultural categories are not universal. As historical materialism has long warned us, they are the product of a particular historical experience. Traveling to China begins long before boarding a plane; it begins when we are willing to question the assumptions through which we perceive what is different from ourselves.
China invites us to ask whether the Western categories through which we understand the state, development, democracy, and modernity are sufficient to account for its own historical experience.
For a long time, China’s image in the West oscillated between exoticism and distrust. It was portrayed as a mysterious Far East, as a civilization worthy of admiration only when its cultural heritage could be displayed in European museums, or as an economic giant reduced to production figures. Yet the historical continuity of a millennia- old civilization that has undergone profound transformations without losing its identity makes China difficult to reduce to the conventional frameworks of Western interpretation. Today, the world speaks about China for deeply material reasons. According to the World Bank, nearly 800 million people have been lifted out of extreme poverty over the past four decades, accounting for approximately 75% of the global reduction in extreme poverty during that period. This economic transformation has been accompanied by substantial public investment in infrastructure, education, science, and technology.
Social indicators reflect part of this transformation. According to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, China’s adult literacy rate now exceeds 97%, while nine years of compulsory education have become nearly universal. These achievements have expanded educational opportunities for hundreds of millions of people and laid the foundations for scientific and technological development that has positioned China among the world’s leading centers of innovation.
A similar transformation can be observed in the environmental sphere . After decades of rapid industrialization that made China one of the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases, the country has become a leading force in the global energy transition. According to the International Energy Agency, China accounts for the world’s largest expansion of renewable energy, produces around 80% of the world’s solar panels, and leads the manufacturing of batteries and electric vehicles.
For all these reasons, it is impossible to think about twenty-first-century global governance without considering China’s transformation. Yet speaking of global governance does not mean suggesting that China seeks to govern the world. Rather, it invites us to ask how China is contributing to the construction of an international order in which decision-making no longer depends exclusively on a single center of power. In this regard, initiatives such as the BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and the Belt and Road Initiative represent an effort to expand cooperation, financing, and integration among regions that have traditionally occupied peripheral positions within the international system. In doing so, they point toward a form of global cooperation that does not easily fit within the conceptual frameworks through which the West organized the international order over the past two centuries.
All of this raises questions that extend far beyond China itself and concern the world as a whole. How can long-term state planning coexist with technological innovation? How should we conceive development, sovereignty, and collective well-being? How should we think about artificial intelligence and its regulation? How does a millennia-old cultural tradition engage with one of the world’s most technologically advanced societies? And how can cooperation be achieved among countries with profoundly unequal material resources?
I do not expect to find definitive answers before my journey. On the contrary, I hope to arrive with better questions. It seems to me that China’s rise is transforming not only the global economy and international politics, but also compelling us to reconsider the intellectual and hermeneutic tools through which we interpret the world.
Every society follows its own historical path, and no experience can simply be transplanted into another context. Latin America will have to develop its own paths toward development, regional integration, and social justice. Yet this does not prevent us from recognizing that China’s experience offers valuable lessons in strategic planning, poverty reduction, technological innovation, and international cooperation—lessons that deserve our careful attention. Approaching China does not mean searching for a model to replicate, but rather expanding the horizon of what we believe is possible. And so, with questions, curiosity, and a willingness to challenge the Western hermeneutic frameworks in which many of us were educated, my journey begins—before the journey itself.
*The views and opinions expressed in the articles are solely those of the individual authors and do not reflect the position of the Secretariat of the Belt and Road Journalist Network.