April 23 (UPI) -- Late last year, Paraguay expelled a Chinese diplomat after he appeared uninvited before Congress and told lawmakers they had to choose between Taiwan and China. The episode was striking: a small, landlocked country of seven million sending away an envoy from the world's second-largest economy. But it revealed something larger than a breach of diplomatic protocol. It showed how trade and investment can become tools of pressure, not just pathways to prosperity.
That pressure is growing. Even without formal diplomatic ties with China, Paraguay now sources more than a third of its imports from the mainland. At the same time, Paraguayan producers watch competitors in Brazil and Argentina sell beef and soybeans directly into the Chinese market. The cost of Paraguay's alignment with Taiwan is felt not only in foreign policy but in commercial life as well.
More than ordinary investment
This is the setting in which what analysts call "corrosive capital becomes relevant, not as an abstract academic concept, but as a practical warning about a particular kind of money.
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