Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

This paper analyzes the  trends  of global investment flows that show the  growing importance  of that which originates in the People’s Republic of China and can be associated with the initiative “La Franja y la Ruta” (in Spanish), also identified as “Belt and Road Initiative” and “One Belt, One Road” (BRI and OBOR). The main content of bri includes financing and investment agreements of infrastructure projects in several Asian, European and African countries, which would improve physical connections. In accordance with the working hypothesis, the economic impacts of BRI are important but even more are the geopolitical consequences that ratify China’s capacity to strengthen itself as a regional and global leader.

Structural reforms in China have led it to record average growth rates of 9.1 percent from 1999 to 2017. Because of this position in the world of technological advances and the driving force of the global economy, it can be distinguished as the trend towards the new world economy, posed by Braudel (1986). In this context, China’s economic growth is also promoted through domestic consumption. To support this provision, the Chinese government encourages private investment in retail. The multinational Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., has been in China since 1996. However, it does not manage to consolidate its presence, which is expressed in the low productivity and minimum competition in the Chinese community. These two factors are the result of low sales revenue, reflecting the insufficient preference for the merchandise, establishments and logistics of the Walmart China subsidiary. Contrary to the efforts of coupling to the tastes and preferences of the local consumer. Therefore, the objective of the work involves studying the productivity and competition of the retailer Walmart China in terms of sales revenue. The method is analytical-descriptive. The document is supported theoretically and empirically. The latter with company data and own calculations on productivity and competition.

The Mexican neoliberal model and its policy of sustaining competitiveness in the low cost of labor, has caused an excessive concentration of income in the highest spheres of the Mexican population, in addition to growing poverty in our country; However, the shortcomings are not distributed equally, since inequality is expressed at the moment in territorial and social inequalities that in turn are a brake on economic growth in the long term. These inequalities can be corroborated by observing the very different levels of development achieved by the entities of our country measured through the Human Development Index. Although Mexico has traditionally been a nation of inequalities, until the mid-eighties of the last century these inequalities had been decreasing; However, the change in the economic model has caused an increase in these inequities. In this sense, the objective of this paper is to know how the concentration of wealth has caused enormous levels of inequality in Mexico. The methodology used is the comparison between the level of Human Development among the federative entities of our country and the evolution of the Gini index to understand how inequality has evolved and in which regions poverty has been concentrated. This reinforces the argument that the neoliberal model is the cause of the growth of poverty and inequality in Mexico.

The objective of this study is to identify the importance of trade between Mexico and Japan, particularly in relation to the Mexican exports of pork to Japan. For the Mexican case, the study shows the existence of intra-industrial trade, from the results obtained with the methodology, which is based on an analysis based on the Index of Commerce Grubel-Lloyd (igl). In addition, we identified major items exported to Japan and the possibilities Mexico has to take advantage of the comparative advantages of the Mexican pork. The results show there’s a chance for Mexico to increase pork export to Japan, particularly products with high added value and basic pieces of pork in the diet of the Japanese.

Book review

Review of the book From the Atlantic to the Pacific. Towards a new global order, by Arturo González Oropeza.

The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and President Donald Trump's decree to impose quotas and raise tariffs on US steel and aluminum imports are expressions of protectionism: one results from the rules of the CPTPP and the other one derives from the progressive deterioration of the American economy as the engine of the global system. The objectives of this paper are: to place the opposition between the Trump administration and the signatories of the CPTPP in the current international economic context; to analyze the main lines of the American protectionism; to study the economic and political relevance of the CPTPP. For now, the opposition "nationalist protectionism vs regulated liberalization" modifies political conditions at the global, Pacific and North American scales. In the global level, the World Trade Organization (WTO) has been relegated to a secondary place, by the preference of the signatories of the CPTPP for regional stipulations on the OMC global regulations and due to the flagrant violations of these global regulations contained in the Korea-FTA. U.S. In the Pacific, the political impact of the CPTPP will be experienced in APEC; Sino-American competition for leadership tends to be replaced by the Sino-Japanese rivalry and the signatories of the CPTPP are in a position to present a result in 2020 and this will be greater if they incorporate new signatories and present a common front to American protectionism. In North America, the likely scenario is the substitution of NAFTA for bilateral agreements. The new Korea-US FTA sets the standards for new US agreements: favorable quotas for sensitive US exports; quotas and, beyond them, high tariffs for US imports; interference in the definition of national economic policies: in Korea, monetary and public expenditure policies; in Mexico, wage and migration policies, as well as combat against drug trafficking.

An extensive signing of free trade agreements network, the adoption of programs to promote foreign trade and the high competition in international markets have emerged as distinctive features of the trade liberalization undertaken by Mexico since thirty years ago. However, these opening has been slow in terms of market diversification and trade facilitation. Thus, the present work consists in analyzing the Mexico Enabling Trade Index´s vis-à-vis to the economies belonging to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership and evaluate their institutions, infrastructure, and services, to simplify the free flow of goods. The objective is detected opportunity areas for policies strategic adoption to strength the trade facilitation, using comparative method and Pearson's correlation.

Book review: China y México. Un diálogo cultural desde las Humanidades y las Ciencias Sociales. Alicia Girón, Aurelia Vargas y Guillermo Pulido (coords.). Colección Universitaria de Estudios Asiáticos, Vol. 2, UNAM, 2015.

Review of the book History, society and politics in contemporary India: Interdisciplinary perspectives