Professors Jörn Dosch, Christopher Dent and Flemming Christiansen

Asia-Latin America conference, Leeds, November 2006.

Until the late 1980s, Japan was the only Asian country with notable political and economic relations. Since then, however, several Asian nations have perceived growing links with the Latin American region as a means of diversifying their political and particularly economic relations while many Latin American decision-makers have increasingly recognised the strategic importance of East Asia in their foreign policy and foreign economic policy designs. The project analyzes the economic, political and socio-cultural relations between Asia and Latin America, and examines their growing importance in international relations. China is of particular importance.

The project has been based on the following main activities:

Asia-Latin America conference, Leeds, November 2006.

• an international conference at the Department of East Asian Studies, University of Leeds, November 2006, funded by the British Academy;
• research collaboration with the University of Guadalajara , funded by the British Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) of the United States (2008-09);
• an international conference on Asia-Pacific FDI in Mexico and competing regions: the Impact of the current Global Economic Crisis, jointly organised by the Universities of Leeds, Guadalajara, Sydney (Australia) and Alberta (Canada) and part-funded by a grant from the World Universities Network (WUN), (forthcoming 21-22 January 2010)
• Joern Dosch’s short-term visiting lectureship/conference stay (forthcoming March 2010) at the Universidad Iberoamericana and Academia Iberoamericana de Estudios sobre Japón (AIEJ) in Mexico City, mainly funded by the Japan Foundation. 

The first findings of the project have been disseminated in Jörn Dosch, Olaf Jacob, eds. Asia and Latin America: Political, Economic and Multilateral Relations, Routledge, 2010.