Xi heads to LatAm

Chinese President Xi Jinping heads today to Latin America and the Caribbean, as he looks to keep on building links with the kind of emerging economies Beijing has cultivated in its rise to global influence.
Xi's visit to Trinidad and Tobago, Costa Rica and Mexico follows his first foreign trip to Russia and three countries in Africa -- Tanzania, South Africa and Congo-Brazzaville -- shortly after taking office in March.
China has embarked on a diplomatic drive since completing its once-in-a-decade power handover, with Xi's number two Premier Li Keqiang also visiting India, Pakistan, Switzerland and Germany, and several high-level visitors to Beijing.
After visiting Mexico, Xi travels to the United States for his first summit with President Barack Obama on June 7-8 in California.
China has in recent years aggressively pushed trade and investment ties with the developing world, particularly Africa and Latin America, to secure raw materials to fuel its economic growth and wield greater geopolitical influence in relation to the United States.
The visit to Mexico, Latin America's second-largest economy after Brazil and a party to the gigantic North American Free Trade Agreement, is the first by a Chinese president since 2005.
China is Mexico's second-largest trading partner, Zhang said, while Mexico is China's second-largest in Latin America. Two-way trade hit $36.7 billion in 2012, he added, a 10 percent increase from the year before.