The strategic south
Xi Jinping tries to press China’s advantage in South America
New polling suggests locals are warming to China
On May 12th Xi Jinping, China’s president, will welcome South American bigwigs to Beijing for China’s biggest diplomatic jamboree since Donald Trump took office.
Among them will be Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (known as Lula), Brazil’s president, Gustavo Petro of Colombia and Gabriel Boric of Chile.
American officials disapprove.
Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defence, has said China’s activity in the Western Hemisphere is “for military advantage and unfair economic gain”.
To date, most of the Trump administration’s attention has been focused on what it sees as problematic Chinese ties close to home.
It worries that Mexico offers a route for Chinese products to bypass tariffs and enter the United States, and that it allows chemicals from China to be made into deadly fentanyl that is smuggled over the border; it fears that the Hong Kong-based firm which runs the ports at either end of the Panama canal influences its operation.
Much less attention is paid to the dramatic expansion of Chinese ties that has taken place over the past decade just slightly farther away, in South America.
Opinion polling commissioned by The Economist shows that although the United States retains an edge in popularity, public opinion of China in South America is improving fast.
China is seen as the more respectful superpower.
In most places surveyed, China is seen as the more reliable trading partner.
As Mr Trump rails against America’s trade deficits, China happily expands deficits with South America, gobbling up copper, lithium and soyabeans.
Trade forms China’s strongest link with the region.
In 2013 the United States was South America’s biggest trading partner, with $280bn in total goods trade in today’s dollars.
By 2023 that was down 25%, while China’s trade jumped 43% to $304bn.
Only Colombia and Ecuador, American allies, still trade more with the United States than with China.
And even there China is drawing closer.
Chinese demand for commodities has been driving this change.
Chile’s copper-ore exports to China almost tripled over the decade.
Brazil’s soyabean exports nearly doubled.
The purchases buy China political influence while the raw materials are used to churn out exports.
Most South American countries also now import more from China than from the United States.
Increasingly, those are imports of more complex products, from electric vehicles to solar panels.
Chinese firms also invest a vast amount of money in South America.
Since 2000 they have poured more than $168bn into the region, chiefly into Brazil.
Favourites like mining and agriculture are now complemented by deals in telecoms, renewables and electricity utilities.
Though investment has declined recently, the value of newly announced projects ticked back up in 2023.
Still, Chinese investment trails that from Europe and the United States.
State-backed loans are another tie.
Since 2005 China has lent some $111bn to Venezuela, Brazil, Ecuador and Argentina.
New loans have declined sharply since 2017 but the debt remains.
Venezuela still owes perhaps $10bn.
Brazil owes billions, too.
Even Mr Trump’s allies are constrained.
Ecuador owes China $3bn, a counterweight to President Daniel Noboa’s pro-Trump instincts.
President Javier Milei of Argentina, a Trump super-fan, recently renewed a $5bn swap line from China despite Mr Trump’s special envoy calling it “extortionate” and saying that the United States wants it to end.
China’s strength is also evident in our new polling in Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela, carried out by Premise, a research firm based in Washington.
The surveys, conducted through a mobile app, use samples balanced by age and sex to reflect national populations.
Overall opinion of the United States is only slightly more favourable than of China and nearly 70% of Brazilians and Colombians, and 60% of Venezuelans, say China’s popularity is growing in their country.
Strikingly, in every country—as well as in a separate survey of Argentina—respondents think China respects them more than the United States does (see chart 1).
The fairer friend
All this influences responses to the trade war.
Mr Trump seems to want to pressure trading partners to distance themselves from China in exchange for a reduction in tariffs with the United States.
But this is going down poorly.
“I don’t want to choose between the United States and China.
I want to have a relationship with both,” said Lula, echoing Mr Boric at a joint press conference held in April.
The gathering in Beijing may even produce a joint statement condemning high tariffs, claims Yue Yunxia of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a state think-tank.
That would play fine back home. Brazilians, Colombians and Venezuelans think China has fairer and more transparent trade practices than the United States does (see chart 2).
The United States also sees a military threat.
“China’s military has too large of a presence in the Western Hemisphere,” Mr Hegseth has said.
There are no Chinese military bases in the hemisphere, so instead Mr Hegseth and colleagues worry that Chinese-built commercial ports, including a new mega-port at Chancay in Peru, could be used by the navy.
Ground stations for relaying radio signals to space are another preoccupation.
China already has one in southern Argentina.
Like the rest of China’s space programme, it is run by an arm of the army.
Mr Milei, ever softening on China, has largely ignored the issue.
A proposed new space observatory in northern Chile, a joint venture by a private Chilean university and China’s state astronomical institute, was recently frozen for review by the Chilean government after American complaints.
Wary, perhaps, of this sort of hectoring, and concerned about Mr Trump’s erraticism, one South American army is considering ways to diversify its intelligence sources and weapons systems away from the United States.
Some welcome this shift. “Trump is also seen as an opportunity,” says Oliver Stuenkel of the Fundação Getulio Vargas, a Brazilian university, “He’s seen as the midwife of a multipolar order.”
The enthusiasm stems partly from the fact that the era of American dominance came with plenty of meddling from Uncle Sam.
Any efforts to persuade South Americans to push China back are hampered by the Trump administration’s all-stick-no-carrot approach.
Deportations, tariffs and threats dominate headlines.
Stronger trade and economic ties would make it much easier for Mr Trump’s team to persuade South Americans to distance themselves from China.
Yet the administration has shown little interest in those.
Gutting USAID does not help.
Even the most pro-American of leaders, Mr Milei, knows that he needs China.
In November he told The Economist that “the well-being of Argentines requires that I deepen my commercial ties with China”.
Premise’s data suggest Argentines agree: 56% say he should maintain strong economic ties with China.
Only 15% disagree.
Charming South America should not be so hard.
While China says its firms just want to make money in the region, their methods can leave a sour taste.
“Our relationship with China is love-hate, and it gets more hateful as time goes by,” says Alfredo Thorne, a former Peruvian finance minister, highlighting China’s goods-dumping.
American culture and values still win out over Chinese ones, according to Premise’s surveys.
Yet South America is often taken for granted.
Evan Medeiros, an architect of the pivot to Asia by a former president, Barack Obama, says a new pivot is now needed, to focus American attention further south.
Whatever its merits, that looks unlikely.
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