During a nine-day trip through Latin America in autumn, Chinese President Xi Jinping met with the leaders of Mexico, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina and opened a Chinese-financed port of $ 3 billion in Peru.
XI repeatedly emphasized his interest in strengthening economic relationships with the region 10,000 miles from Beijing.
“True friends always feel close together” told China's official news agency. “No matter the distance between you.”
In the past two decades, China has started to challenge the long -standing US hegemony in Latin America. In at least six countries – Panama, Peru, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil and Bolivia – it has increased as the largest trading partner in front of the USA.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, Left and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, posing on November 20, 2024 during a welcome ceremony in Alvorada Palace in Brasilia for photos.
(Eraldo Peres / Associated Press)
Now experts say China has been given another opportunity to dominate the region: Donald Trump's presidency.
In his first two weeks of office, Trump has strongly armed American allies and uses the risk of tariffs, concessions from Colombia and then from Mexico. At the same time, he has stopped many US foreign assistance programs that were a lifeline for developing countries – and threatened – many US foreign aid programs.
Suddenly China seems to be a more stable partner for many countries.
“The United States is now more unpredictable and bizarre than ever before,” said Carol Wise, professor of political science at USC and expert in the relationship between China and Latin America. “The Trump government was very hostile to the region, and China never showed this kind of hostility.”
Of all places where Trump's foreign policy has created a newly discovered opening for China, none is more important than Mexico.
President Trump speaks in the White House on January 29, 2020 during the signing of a new North American trade agreement with Canada and Mexico. It is flanked by Vice President Mike Pence (left) and the US trade representative Robert Lighthizer.
(Alex Brandon / Associated Press)
North American free trade agreements that bound back to the United States for three decades from the inseparable entrepreneur from Mexico's economy, and for a long time China was largely left behind from the equation. But that started to change during Trump's first presidency.
In order to rock US tariffs for some of their goods, many Chinese companies have moved parts of their supply chains to Mexico.
According to Mexicans, the Chinese investments in the country in 2022 rose to $ 570 million of USD 5.5 million in 2013 Number of government. According to Siila, the Chinese companies in Mexico, now twice as much industrial areas in Mexico as three years ago.
They build extensive factories in industrial parks like Hofusan in the border state of Nuevo León to send their products that are free of charge to Texas.
Kuka Home Furnic Factory in Hofusan Industrial Park in Mexico is one of many Chinese companies that invest in the Latin American country to shorten the supply chains.
(Marian Carrasquero / Getty Images)
“In one day you can have your imports in the USA,” said Cesar Santos Cantú, a Mexican lawyer who built the park with the help of two Chinese investors on the land of his family.
In view of Trump's urge to protect, the Mexican managers have been encouraged more investments from China and other companies overseas after more protectionist guidelines.
“Mexico has to search for other ways,” said the then secretary Alicia Bárcena last year and praised China as “land that constantly looks like Mexico”.
Juan Carlos Moreno-Brid, business professor at the national autonomous University of Mexico, compared the United States to “an abusive partner” to diversify his trade relationships.
“You can't live on your head for four years,” he said.
Mexico's trade with the USA is still eight times as high as in China. But Washington observes China's interventions south of the border.
“You have all of these elements that push from Mexico to China from an economic perspective,” said Evan Ellis, research professor for Latin American studies at the strategic studies Institute of the US Army War College. “But that complicated the relationship with Mexico and President Trump.”
China initially strengthened the trade with Latin America in the early 2000s to satisfy his insatiable appetite for goods during an economic boom.
It bought soybeans from Brazil, copper from Chile and lithium from Bolivia and flooded the Latin American markets with Chinese products and telecommunications networks.
The Brazilian Vice President Geraldo Alckmin will take part in a meeting with the Chinese President Xi Jinping in the Grand Hall of the people in Beijing on June 7, 2024.
(Wang Zhao / Associated Press)
According to the World Economic Forum, the trade between China and Latin America rose to $ 315 billion in 2020 in 2020. In a decade, this number is expected to exceed 700 billion US dollars. For comparison: the trade between the USA and Latin America in 2020 was 767 billion dollars.
Ellis said that the United States initially slowly reacted to the increasing Chinese influence in Latin America.
“When China priority in South America and to a certain extent in the Caribbean, I thought that there was a wrong feeling of security in the United States,” said Ellis.
China's introduction in the region is not an accident, but the result of strategic diplomacy.
More than 20 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean are part of the Belt and Road initiative of Beijing, their efforts to expand its global influence through the financing of important infrastructure projects. And in 2023, according to the Boston University Global Development Policy Center, eight Latin American presidents officially visited China – the ever.
This soft power helps to pave the way for Chinese investments. It also creates support for one of the most important geopolitical goals of China: more of the world to recognize its territorial claim to Taiwan.
At least five countries in Latin America have reduced relationships with Taiwan in the past eight years to build diplomatic relationships with China. According to Aiddata, a research center of William & Mary, which is pursuing Chinese financing, Hondura's in 2023, a year after China exceeded the United States as an investor.
Bryan Burgess, Senior Policy Specialist there, predicted that China will close the gaps that is due to the reduction of US help for the region.
“The United States, which has resigned from its role in traditional development financing and aid projects, really opens up a door to flood the zone,” said Burgess. “One of the advantages for Latin American countries is now the ability to play the United States and China, make some bargain hunt and try to get cheaper terms.”
A perceived advantage for many Latin American countries is that China does not interfere with politics apart from the Taiwan question. His trade – and the help – is not on a country that adheres to certain principles of democracy, for example in a country, as the United States once demanded, or when working on questions such as immigration that Trump demands.
Henry Huiyao Wang, founder of the non -governmental center for China and globalization in Beijing, said China's emphasis on economic cooperation – and not political compulsion – strengthened his attraction for Latin American countries that have tired the interference in the USA.
“Latin America is still influenced by the USA,” said Wang, “but China can offer them economic benefits and political independence.”
Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard from left listens to the Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, the second from right, during a meeting in the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing on July 2, 2019.
(Mark Schiefelbein / Associated Press)
But turning to China comes with your own risks. Debt waste and failures in some of the projects supported by China-in one of a hydropower embankment of $ 2 billion in Ecuador, which after completion has been used by thousands of cracks, also used doubts among Latin-American countries in order to support too much in China. And China's current economic problems could mean less trade and less generosity for distant governments.
“I don't think bank.
Since China and the United States announce new tariffs against each other this week, a new Cold War seems to be brewing. Latin America will be a theater of the conflict.
“What we see is a profound confrontation between the largest economies in the world: China and the United States,” said Enrique Dussel Peters, director of the Center for Chinese-Mexican Studies at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. “This new triangular relationship is in front of it all over Latin America.”
Linthicum reported from Albuquerque and Yang from Taipei, Taiwan.