China’s strategy for Latin America and the ’Trump Corollary’

On January 3, the United States dramatically demonstrated its supercharged attention to the Western Hemisphere when a U.S. military operation renditioned Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from Caracas to Brooklyn. It is too early to say what this will mean for the future of China-Venezuela relations. In a worst-case scenario for Beijing, China might lose access to Venezuelan oil, fail to recoup outstanding loans estimated at $10-$12 billion, forfeit important space infrastructure in Guárico and Bolívar, and face the expensive prospect of subsidizing the Cuban regime’s survival. In its best-case scenario, China may retain a strong partnership with a better-functioning version of the Chavista regime, perhaps importing more oil as production increases, while painting Maduro’s abduction as proof of U.S. lawlessness in its global propaganda.

Either way, the fate of China-Venezuela relations will not determine the broader trajectory of China’s ties with Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). The two countries’ trade reached only $7 billion in 2024, a mere 1.3% of China’s total LAC trade. Perhaps more importantly, U.S. military intervention is not a scalable strategy for rolling back Chinese influence. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has already overtaken U.S. economic influence in South America. Chinese companies have built, own, or operate much of the region’s critical infrastructure, and at least 47 content-sharing agreements between Chinese state media and LAC news outlets have allowed Beijing to shape public discourse.

The LAC region has become a vital source of the commodities that fuel China’s growth—from critical minerals to agricultural products to energy resources. In December 2025, the PRC issued its third Policy Paper on Latin America and the Caribbean, offering an ambitious vision of ever-expanding cooperation and promising to support LAC countries’ autonomy vis-à-vis the United States.

Yet compared to Asia, Europe, and other parts of the Global South, the LAC region remains a strategic afterthought for Beijing. As the Trump administration reenergizes American focus on the Western Hemisphere, PRC activity in Latin America may face pushback from the United States and regional countries fearful of U.S. retaliation. But if this contestation distracts Washington from competing in regions more important to Beijing—Asia foremost among them—Chinese officials will likely conclude they are coming out ahead.

Regional priorities: Taiwan, trade, and a new world order

Political priorities top the PRC’s regional agenda. Its 2025 LAC policy paper opens with a “Solidarity Program” focused on Taiwan, global governance, and resistance to U.S. hegemony. The paper puts forward an expansive interpretation of Beijing’s “One China” principle as the foundation for cooperation with LAC countries. Most of Taiwan’s remaining diplomatic partners are in Central America and the Caribbean; peeling these countries away from Taipei is a foremost priority for Beijing. But the paper demands more than recognition. It calls for LAC countries to “support the Chinese government in … realizing national reunification”—effectively endorsing Beijing’s right to use any means necessary to achieve its goals vis-à-vis Taiwan.

The paper goes on to enlist LAC countries’ support in establishing a new international order, drawing on Chinese President Xi Jinping’s preferred terminology: “the building of a community with a shared future for humanity.” It invites LAC countries to support the implementation of Xi’s Global Governance Initiative, as well as PRC efforts to reshape international financial institutions and de-dollarize the global economy. Without mentioning the United States by name, the paper promises to “oppose hegemonism and power politics,” “oppose unilateral bullying practices,” and “reject attempts of ‘decoupling’” in the Western Hemisphere. But with a touch of anticlimax, the paper suggests that Beijing will pursue these ends by delivering a strong affirmative agenda that lessens LAC countries’ dependence on the United States, rather than pursuing a more direct confrontation.

The 2025 policy paper also features a lengthy “Development Program,” in which China promises to expand cooperation on trade and investment, finance, energy, mineral resources, agriculture, and technology. Indeed, China’s trade with Latin America reached $518.47 billion in 2024, a 6% year-on-year increase. But the strategy’s flowery celebration of economic cooperation belies a more transactional set of commercial priorities. Latin America is rich in critical minerals, and as part of China’s broader efforts to establish dominance over global mineral supply chains, Chinese companies now purchase the preponderance of lithium, copper, nickel, and other minerals from LAC countries. The Chinese market has also become the primary destination for LAC agricultural exports. Likely motivated by a desire to lessen its dependence on U.S. soybeans and grains, the Chinese government has gone to great lengths to ensure LAC countries can meet China’s phytosanitary requirements and sell agricultural products to Chinese buyers.

Additionally, Beijing views the LAC region as an important market for Chinese exports. Especially in South America and Mexico, the region’s large consumer markets are absorbing a significant portion of China’s overcapacity in green technologies and electric vehicles. These trade flows have bolstered LAC economic growth, but the trading relationship’s extractive character—and the dislocations it has imposed on local industries and labor markets—has also become an irritant in China-LAC relations. Beijing even acknowledged these tensions in the 2025 paper, promising to “properly manage trade frictions with LAC countries.”

Ranking Latin America: An ancillary priority

In November 2024, Xi traveled to Peru and Brazil for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and G20 summits with great fanfare, and many observers viewed his nine days in Latin America as proof of China’s growing emphasis on the region. But Latin America has remained an ancillary priority for Xi and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Of Xi’s 202 bilateral engagements with foreign leaders between April 2024 and mid-January 2026, he interacted with LAC leaders only 18 times, compared to his engagements with leaders from Asia (71), Africa (51), and Europe (50, including Russia), respectively. Senior Chinese officials rarely travel to the LAC region; putting aside multilateral meetings that happen to be hosted there, there have only been 19 high-level PRC visits to LAC countries since 2023—whereas there were 71 such visits to African countries. In this period, Director of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission and Foreign Minister Wang Yi embarked on just one LAC trip, visiting Brazil and Jamaica in January 2024. This contrasts sharply with Wang’s near-constant travel in Asia and his embrace of the long-standing tradition in which the Chinese foreign minister begins each year with a multi-stop trip to Africa.

Notably, 10 of the 19 LAC visits were conducted by Qiu Xiaoqi, the Foreign Ministry’s special representative on Latin American affairs. In higher-priority regions, special representatives’ responsibilities are confined to special projects, often involving conflicts or mediation. For example, the special envoy for Asian affairs engages with Myanmar’s ethnic armed groups, and the special representative for Eurasian affairs defends China’s position on the war in Ukraine. Even though Qiu is a four-time ambassador with significant regional expertise, the fact that he appears to hold broad responsibility for China’s relationships in the LAC region reflects the relative lack of priority Beijing places on them. Even China’s signature LAC diplomatic platform, the China-CELAC, or Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, Forum, is limited to the ministerial level. By contrast, its African counterpart, the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, has met at the head-of-state level since 2006.

These observations are reinforced by the lamentations of China’s leading Latin Americanists. For example, Gao Bo, a researcher with the Institute of Latin American Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a think tank affiliated with the Central Committee of the CCP and the State Council, commented in 2023, “For a long time, China has prioritized its strategic relations with Asian and African countries over those with Latin America.”

Meanwhile, Xi has personally doubled down on Asia. In April 2025, Xi addressed the CCP’s first-ever Central Conference on Work Related to the Periphery, clearly illustrating the primacy of China’s borderlands in its foreign policy. PRC ambitions remain fundamentally global, but its clear priorities are Asia and great power relations. Beijing considers its “periphery” to be the most consequential theater for contesting U.S. influence, advancing a new international order, and pursuing China’s interests broadly.

The “Trump Corollary”: Challenges and opportunities for the PRC

The United States’ 2025 National Security Strategy places renewed emphasis on the Western Hemisphere. It declares a “Trump Corollary” to the 1823 Monroe Doctrine and promises to “deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere.” The strategy otherwise describes competition with China as a predominantly economic affair, but in the Western Hemisphere, it presents China as a geopolitical challenge and security threat whose regional influence must be urgently reduced.

Counterintuitively, this policy may result in gains for Beijing. To the degree the United States’ pivot to Latin America draws its resources, attention, and resolve away from Asia, this is a good outcome for China—even if Beijing takes certain losses in the LAC region as a result. For instance, in recent months, 25% of the U.S. Navy’s deployed warships have been concentrated in the Caribbean. To date, this has not impacted deployments in the Indo-Pacific. But if this deployment expands further, it will force difficult tradeoffs for U.S. posture elsewhere. Beijing also benefits from the propaganda value of Washington’s increasingly neo-imperial tone in the Western Hemisphere, which Chinese officials have gleefully condemned, contrasting the United States’ erratic gunboat diplomacy with the stable, respectful, and mutually beneficial engagement that China can supposedly deliver. This message resonates powerfully in the Global South—including in some parts of the LAC region itself. At the same time, Beijing surely welcomes President Donald Trump’s normalization of the idea that large countries possess an unlimited right to use military force against smaller neighbors.

Nonetheless, an aggressive U.S. effort to contest Chinese influence in Latin America could do real damage to Chinese interests. The most significant losses, from Beijing’s perspective, will be those affecting China’s position within its own neighborhood. For example, under U.S. pressure, Argentine President Javier Milei suspended PRC plans to build a massive radio telescope in San Juan Province. China’s network of deep space telescopes and ground stations at key latitudes in the Western Hemisphere would substantially enhance its telemetry capabilities in a Taiwan contingency. While the loss of this one site is not decisive, if Beijing were to lose access to its space facilities in several other LAC countries as well, the strategic effects could be far-reaching. The PRC would also be deeply concerned if the United States were to succeed in encouraging Central American countries like Honduras to restore diplomatic relations with Taipei. Even a successful U.S. effort to maintain the status quo and prevent the PRC from “flipping” any of Taiwan’s seven remaining LAC allies would be viewed warily in Beijing.

It is also worthwhile to revisit Trump’s earliest attempt to wrest critical infrastructure away from Chinese companies in Central America. To address U.S. concerns regarding Hong Kong-based CK Hutchinson’s ownership of ports on both sides of the Panama Canal, a BlackRock-led consortium struck a deal in March 2025 to purchase all of the company’s ports outside China. The acquisition includes five additional ports in Latin America and another 36 across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. The PRC has effectively blocked the deal by insisting that COSCO, its state-owned shipping company, must have a controlling stake. While Beijing is surely concerned about its continued access to the Panama Canal, the deal’s global scope raises the stakes far higher. CK Hutchinson’s Westports Malaysia, for example, sits on the Strait of Malacca—a maritime chokepoint over which Chinese military planners have obsessed for decades, fearing that in a war over Taiwan, the United States could weaponize the strait and blockade China’s energy imports. This illustrates how the “Trump Corollary” can create strategic dilemmas for China beyond the LAC region.

Ultimately, the “Trump Corollary” will only succeed if the United States can mobilize sufficient development assistance, investment, and broad-based opportunities to compete credibly with China’s offerings in the Western Hemisphere—while simultaneously fielding an energetic engagement strategy in the regions that China prioritizes more highly. If the United States were to cripple the PRC’s standing in Latin America but relinquish its own influence in Asia in the process, history would remember the “Trump Corollary” as a Pyrrhic victory.