V OLUME 23 • I SSUE 20

His apparent inability to tackle severe economic challenges head-on, such as a collapsing housing market and the heavy indebtedness incurred by state-owned enterprises and local governments, will hardly burnish the reputation of the “leader for life.” The deaths and disappearances at the highest echelons of the Party in recent months echo the silence in the policymaking domain. [...] At the recent Belt and Road Initiative Forum in Beijing, the UAE and China signed two agreements focused on digital currency: one between the Bank of China and the UAE’s Bank of Abu Dhabi, and another between the People’s Bank of China and the Central Bank of the UAE (The Third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, October 18). [...] to win the contract to manage the Parana-Paraguay waterway; the energy sector, with the agreement to build Atucha 3 nuclear reactor, and the building and exploitation of Cauchari Solar Plant; and the commodities sector, with the acquisition of Argentinian Lithea by China’s Ganfeng Lithium (Casa Rosada, October 15; TN, May 30; Reuters, July 11, 2022). [...] While the left wing of the Peronist party has actively sought a strategic partnership with the PRC to counterbalance the United States and build international autonomy, the center-right opposition groups and the moderate sectors of Peronism prefer to limit Chinese engagement to the financial and commercial sectors. [...] The difference in policy witnessed under the administrations of Cristina Fernandez and Alberto Fernandez had less to do with the effectiveness of Beijing’s economic pressures than with the ideological preferences of the leftist faction of the Peronist party, which saw China as a valuable ally in its crusade to weaken the United States’ traditional links with Argentina’s armed forces.