My China story begins with an earthquake.
In April 2016, I was fifteen when a 7.8-magnitude quake devastated Ecuador’s coast. Over 700,000 people needed assistance and almost 100,000 were displaced. It became clear that my country wasn’t prepared for something of that scale, so we turned to international aid. That’s when China stepped in.
From Quito, I received Chinese aid and also watched TV coverage of Beijing’s relief efforts. First came a $9.2 million donation, which helped rebuild homes and restore damaged infrastructure. I learned my country’s 911 emergency system was built by China, and it handled most of the calls during the disaster-relief period. Firefighters and paramedics, some of them Chinese, reached survivors thanks to the China-backed network, ultimately saving thousands of lives. China’s aid was more than monetary; it helped us start from scratch.
On November 18, 2016, months after the earthquake, Chinese President Xi Jinping made a state visit to Ecuador. He was the first Chinese head of state to do so. During his two-day stay, President Xi held talks with Ecuador’s president, signed multiple cooperation agreements, and toured the EC911 emergency-response center in Quito. He also highlighted China’s role in funding projects like Coca Codo Sinclair; a hydroelectric plant that furnishes most of the country’s electricity. This visit marked Ecuador’s entry into the Belt and Road Initiative, with both presidents pointing to an era of “win-win cooperation.” In 2018, Ecuador formally joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative by signing a memorandum of understanding to expand practical cooperation. This agreement aimed to enhance trade, technology exchange, infrastructure development, and cultural dialogue, forging a closer partnership between our two countries.
Amid those tumultuous years, one moment stands out to me above all. On my way to school, I saw a box covered in characters I’d never seen. I took a photo and translated it: “中国政府援助厄瓜多尔地震救援物资包机启运” (Zhōngguó zhèngfǔ yuánzhù Èguāduō’ěr dìzhèn jiùyuán wùzī bāojī qǐyùn), which means “Chinese government aid to Ecuador earthquake relief supplies, airlift departed.” I was so curious. Those unfamiliar symbols, so different from my own language, symbolized something changing in my country. After that moment, I decided to study China.
My first academic exposure to Chinese culture began at Quito’s Confucius Institute and in the city’s chifas—restaurants serving Chinese cuisine, largely established by families of Chinese immigrants who arrived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The term chifa derives from chi-fan (吃饭), meaning “to eat a meal." At the Institute, I attended cultural events; in the chifas, I experienced culinary traditions. I joined celebrations for Chinese New Year, the Lantern Festival, the Dragon Boat Festival, and the Mid-Autumn Festival, sampling dumplings and hand-pulled noodles while opening my first red envelope. Each experience, whether at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito or in those bustling restaurants, felt like a small window into a world I had yet to understand.
Throughout my country’s recent development, through thick and thin, China has been there. But I also realized that, aside from cultural events and Chinese classes reserved for elite university students in Quito, and those delicious meals at the chifas, the vast majority of Ecuadorians didn’t have access to China. China was already here, from infrastructure development to natural resources, disaster relief to education, but most Ecuadorians seemed unaware or unfazed by this rapid transformation. I thus decided to take a leap of faith and study in China for my undergraduate degree at Duke Kunshan University (DKU), a joint venture between Duke University and Wuhan University. I believed that if we really wanted to understand China, we had to go there, immerse ourselves in its culture, and then bring that knowledge back home.
In Kunshan, a county-level city nestled between Shanghai and Suzhou, I tried to absorb as much as possible. I embarked on what continues to be a demanding but rewarding journey of learning Chinese, traveling across China with broken phrases. I spent a summer exchange at Wuhan University, visited Shangrao in northeastern Jiangxi province, and endured nearly freezing temperatures in Harbin, all while puzzling through different accents and dialects.
I also signed up for six months of tai chi classes, determined to master the “24-form Tai Chi,” a simplified version of traditional Yang-style tai chi. For my final exam, I ventured outside DKU to see if I could keep up with the ayis, the local experts. Needless to say, I learned humility faster than I mastered any posture.
Meanwhile, I deepened my engagement with Ecuador’s diplomatic mission in China by visiting the consulate in Shanghai and attending their training sessions. There, I studied Ecuador’s recent free trade agreement with China, the import‐export laws governing our exports, and the sectors in which our country specializes in. Gradually, I began to understand the practical issues shaping Ecuador’s engagement with China, and with that knowledge I embarked on my own research.
In my senior seminar course, “China and the Global South,” I studied the Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric project I mentioned earlier. I also looked at two Chinese-owned mining operations in Zamora Chinchipe: the San Carlos–Panantza and Mirador mines, managed by Corriente Resources (a subsidiary of China Railway Construction Corporation–Tongguan).
Through literature reviews and interviews, I learned about the challenges facing Sino-Ecuadorian relations, especially the strong local resistance from Indigenous Shuar communities in the ecologically sensitive Cordillera del Cóndor. My research shed light on areas for improvement in current cooperation between our two countries. At the same time, I began working with DKU’s Center for the Study of Contemporary China on Beijing’s diplomatic outreach in Central America, exploring why nations like El Salvador and Nicaragua established Chinese embassies.
In Kunshan, I immersed myself in Chinese culture and conducted research, all while trying to understand my surroundings. Through these experiences, I built a solid, nuanced foundation for understanding how China’s global outreach, whether through infrastructure, energy, or diplomacy, reshapes South America. I came to see that one cannot envision development without accounting for China, and that we need more people who know how to engage with it.
I realized my undergraduate education was merely the first step in a lifelong journey to understand China, and I quickly decided to continue studying there.
Yenching Academy offered the perfect program under the politics and international relations track. I am particularly influenced by one Peking University professor and former chief economist at the World Bank, Justin Yifu Lin, who explains that as China moves up the value chain, shifting from low-skilled manufacturing into higher-tech and service industries, it will release tens of millions of labor-intensive manufacturing jobs. I am intrigued to see how China’s evolution will foster development for countries like mine, with an emphasis on diversification beyond oil and moving up the supply chain in other commodities. Understanding how Chinese aid and investment might support emerging sectors where Ecuador has a comparative advantage, such as specialty agriculture, will be crucial for poverty alleviation. By studying China’s development model, I aim to grasp how Ecuador can both benefit from and contribute to this broader global shift.
As a Yenching Scholar, my goal is to return to Ecuador as a China expert and offer actionable insights to shape development strategies. I will strive to be a bridge that facilitates constructive engagement, leveraging Sino-Ecuadorian cooperation for sustainable growth while safeguarding Latin America’s biodiversity, indigenous communities, and resources. At the same time, I know China will forever be part of my life, and I will continue to immerse myself in its culture long after graduation.
