China’s role in Latin America has grown since the turn of the century, promising economic opportunities and raising considerations about Beijing’s influence. China’s state-owned enterprises are the main investors in the region’s energy, infrastructure and area industries, and the country has overtaken the United States as South America’s largest trading partner. Beijing has also expanded its diplomatic, cultural and military presence across the region. More recently, it has leveraged its help amid the COVID-19 pandemic, offering the region medical supplies, loans, and a slew of millions of vaccine doses.
But to the U. S. The U. S. and its allies worry that Beijing will use those relationships to pursue its geopolitical goals, adding further isolation to Taiwan and authoritarian regimes like those in Cuba and Venezuela. President Joe Biden, who sees China as a “strategic competitor” in the region, has pledged to cooperate economically with Latin America, but some analysts say the United States deserves to do more.
China’s ties to the region date back to the sixteenth century, when the Manila Galleon industry management facilitated the exchange of porcelain, silk, and spices between China and Mexico. In the 1840s, thousands of Chinese immigrants were sent to paint as “coolies. “, or indentured servants, in Cuba and Peru, on sugar cane plantations or silver mines. Over the next century, China’s ties to the region were largely tied to migration [PDF] as Beijing remained preoccupied with its own internal turmoil.
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Most Latin American countries identified Mao Zedong’s communist government after U. S. President Richard Nixon’s to China in 1972, but it wasn’t until China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001 that they began forging strong cultural, economic, and political ties. Today, Brazil, Cuba, Paraguay, Peru and Venezuela are among the Latin American countries with the largest Chinese diaspora communities.
In 2000, the Chinese market accounted for less than 2% of Latin America’s exports, but China’s immediate expansion and resulting demand led to the region’s commodity boom. Over the next 8 years, the industry grew at an average annual rate of 31%. [PDF], reaching a price of $180 billion in 2010. In 2021, the industry hit a record $450 billion, a figure that remained virtually unchanged in 2022, with some economists expecting it to exceed $700 billion through 2035. China is now in the South the largest trading spouse of the United States and the moment of Latin America as a whole, after the United States.
Latin American exports to China are basically soybeans, copper, oil, oil and other raw fabrics that the country wants to give life to its commercial development. In return, the region essentially imports higher-value-added manufactured goods, an industry that some experts say has undermined local industries with less expensive Chinese goods. Since 2023, Beijing has concluded flexible industrial agreements with Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Peru, and so far twenty-one Latin American countries have signed China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). (Talks on a flexible industrial agreement with Uruguay are ongoing. )
Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI) and loans also play a critical role in strengthening ties with the region. Meanwhile, the state-owned China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China are among the region’s top lenders; Between 2005 and 2020, they collectively lent some $137 billion to Latin American governments in exchange for oil and used it to finance energy and infrastructure projects. In 2022 alone, loans totaled $813 million [PDF]. Venezuela is by far the largest borrower; Lately it has $60 billion in Chinese state loans, most commonly similar to energy and infrastructure. That’s nearly double the amount for the largest borrower at the time, Brazil. In addition, China is a voting member of the Inter-American Development and Development Bank of the Caribbean. Bench.
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However, these links have raised some concerns, especially among regional governments. While Chinese loans come with fewer strings attached, their reliance can push economically volatile countries like Venezuela into what critics call “debt traps” that can lead to default. In fact, several Latin American countries are trying to renegotiate the terms of their debt. Critics also say Chinese corporations are lowering environmental and hard-working standards, and warn that China’s increasing control over critical infrastructure such as ports and power grids poses risks to national security. There is also temores. de develop economic dependence in countries like Chile, which sent more than $36 billion in exports, or about 38% of its total, to China in 2021.
At the forefront is China’s preference for expanding its sphere of influence through what it calls “South-South cooperation” [PDF], a progressive framework based on aid, investment and trade. it has helped Beijing build political goodwill with local governments and has become a viable spouse of choice for the United States and Europe.
Since former Chinese President Jiang Zemin’s historic thirteen-day tour of Latin America in 2001, there have been dozens of high-level political exchanges. President Xi Jinping has visited the region at least 11 times since taking it in 2013. In addition to several bilateral agreements with countries in the region, China has signed comprehensive strategic partnerships, the highest ranking it gives to its diplomatic allies, with Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela.
China’s push to isolate Taiwan is another major factor. With Beijing refusing to have diplomatic relations with countries that recognize Taiwan’s sovereignty, Latin America for the island has declined in recent years; Only seven countries in the region still recognize it. In 2023, Honduras became the newest to transfer diplomatic allegiance to Beijing after Taipei rejected the country’s request for billions of dollars in aid. Other recent changes come with the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua. Experts say the remaining die-hards, such as Haiti, face greater pressure.
Meanwhile, some observers say the development of ties between China and Latin America is strengthening authoritarian governments, adding those of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. China’s role in those countries is that of “an incubator of populism,” says Evan Ellis, a professor of Latin American studies studies at the U. S. Institute for Strategic Studies. U. S. Army War College. ” It is not that China is seeking to produce undemocratic regimes, but that undemocratic regimes find a willing spouse in China. “
The Chinese government’s strategy in Latin America, as defined in its 2016 white paper on defense strategy and others, the importance of security and defense cooperation. and education programmes.
Venezuela remains the Chinese military’s biggest customer in the region after the U. S. government took action. The U. S. government banned all sales of advertising weapons to the country starting in 2006. Between 2006 and 2022, Beijing reportedly exported weapons to Venezuela worth some $629 million. Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru have also bought millions of dollars worth of Chinese military aircraft, ground vehicles, air defense radars and attack rifles [PDF]. Similarly, Cuba has sought its military ties with China, hosting China’s People’s Liberation Army for several port visits. TO US. Intelligence officials have also sounded the alarm about evidence that China is cooperating on intelligence with Cuba.
China has also participated in the UN peacekeeping project in Haiti that began in 2004, adding the deployment of more than a hundred insurrection police in the country. After less than a decade, China withdrew from Haiti but is still conducting military education training in the region. and providing materials to local law enforcement. For example, China provided Bolivian police with insurrection equipment and army cars during the administration of Evo Morales Ayma, donated transport equipment and motorcycles to the police forces of Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago, and provided Ecuador with tens of thousands of automatic weapons.
Many analysts say China’s “COVID-19 diplomacy” in Latin America was an effort to champion its symbol and curry favor with regional governments. This has included the distribution of medical devices such as ventilators, diagnostic kits and masks; provide billions of dollars in loans to countries to buy Chinese vaccines; and make an investment in local vaccine production facilities.
By June 2022, China had delivered more than 400 million doses of vaccines to Latin America. In addition, at least a dozen countries in the region have signed vaccine contracts with Beijing, some of which included generation transfers and cooperative studies with the Chinese vaccine developer. Sinovac. Chile among the main beneficiaries, with only about 70% of its COVID-19 vaccination policy coming from Chinese vaccines; Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Peru have also purchased tens of millions of doses.
However, some countries have expressed fears about Beijing’s vaccine diplomacy. Honduras and Paraguay, for example, have alleged that they have been insisted on giving up Taiwan’s popularity in exchange for doses. Some analysts suspected that China was also their vaccine lever to push for the expansion of Huawei, the controversial Chinese telecommunications giant. In Brazil, regulators overturned an earlier ruling to ban Huawei from installing the country’s 5G networks weeks after China provided Brasilia with millions of doses of vaccine.
Between 2000 and 2018, China invested $73 billion in Latin America’s unfired fabric sector, adding construction refineries and processing plants in countries rich in coal, copper, grass gas, oil and uranium. More recently, Beijing has focused on making an investment in lithium production. in the so-called lithium triangle countries of Argentina, Bolivia and Chile; Together, the triad comprises roughly some of the world’s known lithium, a steel needed to produce batteries.
China’s state-owned enterprises are strongly in development; PowerChina, for example, has more than fifty projects underway in fifteen Latin American countries by the end of 2022. But the scale and scope of those efforts are fueling environmental and fitness concerns. China has also taken an interest in the region’s renewable energy sector. The China Development Bank has financed primary solar and wind energy projects, such as Latin America’s largest solar power plant in Jujuy, Argentina, and the Punta Sierra wind farm in Coquimbo, Chile.
Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Peru and Uruguay are members of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, where they have some voting rights. Beijing has also financed structural projects [PDF] in the region, focusing on ports, airports, highways and railways. However, a 2023 report [PDF in Spanish] through the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights analyzed the effects of more than a dozen Chinese-led large-scale infrastructure projects in the region and found that had negative effects on the environment. and local indigenous communities.
Meanwhile, China continues to target the construction and emergence of “new infrastructures,” such as synthetic intelligence (AI), cloud computing, smart cities, and 5G generation from telecommunications corporations such as Huawei. Despite U. S. warnings. Against the use of Huawei equipment, which policymakers say makes countries vulnerable to Chinese cyber threats, countries in the region are increasingly so: Huawei unveiled a two-year “5G city” pilot assignment in Curitiba, Brazil, in 2022.
Beijing has also sought cooperation in the area with Latin America, starting with joint studies and production of Sino-Brazilian satellites in 1988. China’s largest non-domestic area facility is located in Argentina’s Patagonian desert, and has satellite floor stations in Bolivia, Brazil, Chile and Venezuela. Its proximity to the U. S. The U. S. has raised fears that they could be used to spy on U. S. assets. U. S.
U. S. policymakers and military officersThe US has expressed its considerations on the development of China’s presence in Latin America, even as Washington remains a target elsewhere, on the consequences of the Russian war in Ukraine. trend,” said Adm. Craig S. Faller [PDF], former head of U. S. Southern Command. President Donald Trump made a more complicated decision. A linear technique to its predecessors to impose sanctions on several countries and cut investment. for regional organizations; some analysts say this has brought some governments closer to Beijing. Trump has also pulled out of industrial relations with the region, abandoning the Trans-Pacific Partnership and renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement.
President Biden, who assumed leadership in Latin American politics during his tenure as Barack Obama’s vice president, has long argued that the United States deserves to renew its leadership role in the region to counter an emerging China. Calling China a “strategic competitor” [PDF] and pledging to strengthen U. S. partnershipsSpeaking in the U. S. in the Western Hemisphere, Biden presented Build Back Better World (B3W) with his Group of Seven (G7) counterparts. The initiative aimed to counter China’s BRI by creating infrastructure in low- and middle-income countries. However, Biden’s management only committed $6 million to B3W in its first year, and it was later renamed the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment. At the 2022 Summit of the Americas, Biden promised a series of new economic initiatives.
In addition, Biden’s management has sought to bolster its aid to Taiwan; increase its vaccine donations to the region, totaling some sixty-five million doses by early 2022; and went on to raise considerations about Huawei. However, some experts say Biden rarely focuses enough on the region, especially on trade. The most recent report [PDF] from the U. S. Economic and Security Review Commission. The government highlighted the demanding situations posed to Washington by Beijing’s growing influence in Latin America.
Meanwhile, the bipartisan bill introduced by Senators Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and Marco Rubio (R-FL) aims to counter China’s “malign influence” in the region by strengthening multilateral security cooperation and counternarcotics efforts. Other legislative proposals come with calls for the United States to create permanent industrial partnerships with countries in the Western Hemisphere to inspire the “relocation” of chains of origin from China to closer countries.
This report via the Congressional Research Service highlights China’s commitment to Latin America [PDF].
This International Monetary Fund execution paper explains how China has been the top destination for foreign direct investment in Latin America since the mid-2010s.
For Americas Quarterly, former Chilean Finance Minister Felipe Larraín and Pepe Zhang of the Atlantic Council read about how China maintains its presence in the region.
This database from the Inter-American Dialogue and Boston University’s Center for Global Development Policy tracks Chinese loans to Latin America.
For the Carter Center, Margaret Myers and Rebecca Ray read about China’s effect in [PDF] on regional progress and stability.
For Foreign Relations, Julio Armando Guzmán, of the National Endowment for Democracy, explains how the West can counter China in Latin America by investing in the other peoples of the region.
Will Merrow created the graphics for this summary.