China–Mexico relations

Sino-Mexican relations

China	Mexico

Mexico–China relations are foreign relations between the People's Republic of China and the United Mexican States. They were established amidst tensions in 1972, and in recent years have seen an intense export rivalry over the United States market, with the Mexican government having accused the Chinese of impinging on its export territory by flooding the US with cheap goods manufactured in low-wage factories.

Sino-Mexican contacts date to the early days of the Spanish Colonial Empire in the Americas and the Philippines. In the 16-17th century, people, goods, and news traveling between China and Spain usually did so through the Philippines (where there was a large Chinese settlement) and (via the Manila galleon trade) Mexico (this is different from the routes of the Portuguese and later Dutch, who sailed from Europe to China around Africa and via the Indian Ocean). The first two galleons loaded with Chinese goods arrived from the Philippines to Acapulco in 1573.

Of particular significance for the trade between the Spanish Colonial Empire and Ming and Qing China were the so-called "Spanish dollars", fine silver coins many of which were minted in Mexico from Mexican silver. Even after Mexican independence, and, later, the Spain's loss of the Philippines, Mexican dollars remained important for China's monetary system. During the late Qing, they became the standard relative to which the silver coins that China's provincial mints started to produce were to be valued.

This historic connection between the two countries is attested by two important early Spanish-language books (soon translated to Europe's other major languages) that were authored by Spanish ecclesiastics stationed in Mexico: Juan González de Mendoza's The history of the great and mighty kingdom of China and the situation thereof (1585) and Juan de Palafox y Mendoza's The History of the Conquest of China by the Tartars (posthumously published in 1670).

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