China's global expansion has reached Latin America and the Caribbean, where the Asian giant has been pursuing an aggressive trade policy for a decade. Besides investing heavily in the region's abundant natural resources and shipping huge quantities of cheap industrial goods into the area, China is also interested in buying Latin America's food commodities -- especially soybeans. While trade with China has provided a historic bonanza for Latin producers, a growing trade imbalance -- favoring China -- has soured the initial euphoria. In exchange for Latin America's raw materials, China exports manufactured goods that are clobbering Latin competitors, threatening to return the region to its 1970s-era over-dependence on commodity exports. China also has emerged as a major investor -- and financier -- for the region, helping it to weather the 2008-09 global recession. China's sudden emergence as a significant player in the hemisphere also has sparked concern that China might eventually undermine U.S. influence and interest in the vast region -- a fear that Beijing carefully tries to assuage.

Kenneth J. Stier is a freelance writer who has worked for various wire services, newspapers and news organizations on several continents, including TIME, Newsweek, Fortune and CNBC. He has lived in several countries in Asia, including Vietnam where he opened a news bureau in Hanoi for dpa, Germany's main news agency, as part of the first group of Western reporters allowed to reside in the reunified country after the Vietnam War. He has also spent extended periods of time in Latin America and the Caucasus, where he was in Tbilisi for Georgia's Rose Revolution. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.