China and Costa Rica boost
New Boost for Booming Trade with China
The Kung Tse Oriental Institute building in San Pedro, east of San José, is painted a bright white. Inside, Ilien Kuo, the school's founder, walks through the empty classrooms and points out where her 30 to 40 students gather for Mandarin classes on nights and weekends.
She's had a total of about 80 students, even though the school has yet to be formally inaugurated. Most are lawyers, businessmen and professionals, even though that hadn't been Kuo's plan.
"I thought that I would get a lot of the second-generation Chinese (immigrants)," Kuo said, chuckling. "But it turns out the students are almost all Ticos."
It's just one more sign of a growing phenomenon: the "Chinafication" of Costa Rica, which reached a crescendo Wednesday when President Oscar Arias announced that Costa Rica has established formal diplomatic relations with the country (see separate story).
The announcement follows several years of booming trade between the two countries, during which China quickly hopped-skipped-jumped up the list to become Costa Rica's second-largest trading partner behind the United States, both in imports and exports.
The effects can be seen and felt in nearly every sector of the Costa Rican economy, to varying degrees: clothing, consumer goods, cars and light trucks, construction materials, agricultural exports and even scrap (it is rumored that those expensive communication cables that keep getting stolen in Costa Rica end up in China).
Labels: Costa Rica, Costa Rica Economy, Costa Rica Politics
