China’s Relations with Latin America: A Conversation with Dr. Ryan Berg
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I'm Bonnie Lin, Director of the China Power Project and Senior Advisor at the Center for Strategic International Studies. Over the past decade, China has solidified its position as a major economic partner for Latin America. How significant are its activities in the region and how extensive is its influence?

What implications do these trends hold for U.S. interests and policy in the region? Furthermore, how are these dynamics showcased at the recent APEC and G20 meetings in Peru and Brazil?

To explore these questions, we're joined by Dr. Ryan Berg. Ryan C. Berg is Director of the Americas Program and Head of the Future of Venezuela Initiative at CSIS. He is also an adjunct professor at the Catholic University of America and a course coordinator at the United States Foreign Service Institute.

His research focuses on U.S.-Latin American relations, strategic competition and defense policy, authoritarian regimes, armed conflict and transnational organized crime, and trade and development.

Previously, Dr. Berg was a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he helped lead its Latin America Studies program, as well as visiting research fellow at the University of Oxford's Changing Character of War program. Dr. Berg was a Fulbright Scholar in Brazil and is a Council on Foreign Relations term member. He has published in a variety of peer-reviewed academic and policy-oriented journals. His articles have also appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, CNN, and other outlets.

He routinely testifies before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Dr. Burke obtained a Ph.D. in MPhil in Political Science, an MSc in Global Governance and Diplomacy from the University of Oxford.

Earlier, he obtained a BA in Government and Theology from Georgetown University. He is fluent in Spanish and Portuguese and is conversational and Slovenian. Ryan, thanks for joining us today. Thanks very much for having me, Bonnie. I'd like to start with a question of how important is Latin America globally and why should we care?

Well, Latin America is an incredibly important region globally. It's chock full of important commodities. Mining is just one very important element of what Latin America brings to the world, especially minerals that have become incredibly important to the energy transition.

Energy production and the production of green energy in particular is a specialty of the region. If you look at the region's energy grids and its matrix, they're all incredibly clean and the region will likely become an exporter relatively soon of some of these green technologies and green energy.

If you look at the resources, the natural resources that the region is blessed with, much of the world's forests, clean water comes from Latin America. Latin America is home to a couple of countries like Brazil and Argentina, Mexico, that are going to be important players in shoring up global food security. It's also a really important region when it comes to the so-called global south. This is a block of countries that are the most democratic.

of any in the developing world. 32 of the 35 countries in the Western Hemisphere are democracies. So the democracy piece is down and they play an important role in these South-South ties that China likes to develop. And when you look at Latin America from the U.S. perspective, how central is the region to U.S. interests, whether that's on the security, economic, or political front? And from your perspective, how much do we prioritize the region?

So Latin America is extremely important for our strategic interests. I think it's safe to say that we've been practicing what I would characterize as strategic neglect for decades now, thinking that we are really the only game in town when China has shown us that that's clearly not the case. Latin America has important historic, linguistic, migratory and development links to the United States.

It's also the only tangible vector for threats to present themselves to the homeland. There are plenty of reasons for the United States to think of Latin America in its overall grand strategy, and yet for decades has been practicing strategic neglect, and Latin America has been falling down on the priority scale relative to US interests in other regions, of course, the Indo-Pacific, Europe. I would even put Latin America lower than Africa in many foreign policy prioritizations for the United States.

One challenge for us, I would say, Bonnie, is that the U.S. usually tends to lead with issues in Latin America that people of the region consider to be part of a negative agenda. What I mean by that is it's an agenda of don'ts.

don't bring drugs, don't bring crime, don't bring other types of things to the US homeland that we don't want and that become caught up in the US domestic political scene and political rhetoric in ways that can send negative messages downstream to folks in the region. And one of the things that we've lacked, I would argue, over the last 20 years or so is a really attractive vision of the region that speaks to the global ambitions

of the region, the hopes and aspirations of the people who call that region home in a way that is an attractive element to a foreign policy. We've lacked that, I think, in the last two decades. And that remains an opportunity for any administration that's willing to take it up. I would argue that we've had it at certain other points in time, such as the FDR's good neighbor policy or the Nixon administration or the Kennedy administration, when there were real visions of what Latin America could be

But we've lacked that for a long time, and we've failed to speak to the hopes and aspirations of many people living in the region. I have a number of follow-up questions about how the region looks at the United States. But before that, I wanted to get your thoughts on how interested you believe China is in the region. You mentioned the lack of a positive agenda coming out of the United States for Latin America. Do you think China has a positive agenda? And does the region perceive that China has one?

Well, China certainly tries to position itself as a partner for the region on win-win cooperation, as we often hear from the Chinese. Many argue that China isn't all that interested in Latin America as a region.

After all, the first strategic paper from China's foreign ministry on Latin America doesn't get published until about the early 2010s. The Belt and Road Initiative, if you look at that as a proxy of Chinese interest in various regions in the world, well, it contemplated the polar regions before even thinking about coming to Latin America, and it came to Latin America quite late.

But since then, since it first came to Latin America in 2017, we had 22 countries that

join China's BRI. The region has remained non-aligned in a lot of hot-button global issues like the war in Ukraine and the conflict in Gaza, while also taking part in some of the world's alternative visions of global order. Obviously, we all know that Brazil is a major part of the original five BRICS members, but there are also other important institutions that Latin America has spawned

like SILAC, the community of Latin American and Caribbean nations, where China has its own dialogue with that grouping. And specifically, it prefers to work with that grouping because it doesn't include Canada and the United States. And then there's also the angle of Taiwan recognition. Seven of the remaining 13 countries that still recognize Taiwan diplomatically

are in the region. You've got Guatemala and Belize and Central America. You've got Paraguay and South America, and then four Caribbean countries, Haiti, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and St. Kitts and Nevis, all still recognizing Taiwan. And so insofar as reducing Taiwan's global influence is a major goal in Chinese foreign policy, Latin America is really ground zero for that. So against those who argue that Latin America is not all that important,

For China, I would push back and say I think it's very important for China for those reasons that I've just outlined, and also the fact that the Chinese have found a significant level of economic complementarity with quite a few economies in Latin America. Latin America is playing a very important role for mainland China in terms of shoring up its food security, its commodity needs, and other things that the region seems to have that China wants.

In terms of China's presence and activities in Latin America, some of what you indicated, including increased Chinese interest in Latin America for BRI since 2017, indicate more activities under Xi Jinping's leadership of China. Have you seen Xi Jinping, aside from his most recent trip,

take trips to the region? And have you seen that he is personally invested in the region? Well, I do think that Xi is personally invested in growing China's presence in the region. I think it does a number of things for China. I mean, it sends a message to the United States that China can play in what has historically been considered to be the sphere of influence of the United States, known pejoratively in the United States as our backyard.

But the other thing is that she has been in the region prior to COVID. He took a couple trips to the region. His last trip before COVID was in 2019. And then his first post-COVID trip was this recent one to Peru for the APEC summit and to Brazil for the G20.

Notably, in terms of presence in the region, Xi has been in the region as much as US presidents have been in the region over the past two administrations. So if you take eight years of Xi and you say, "Okay, there was one pre-COVID visit, directly pre-COVID visit, and then one post-COVID visit," that's the same number of visits in the Trump plus Biden eras combined. Trump took one trip to the region. It was for G20 in Argentina.

Biden did the same recently for APEC in Peru and the G20 in Brazil. So you have over two US administrations, essentially the same number of presidential visits to South America as Xi. That from a Latin American perspective in the United States is simply not enough attention to the region when the Chinese president, who has much further to travel than the US and historically has less connectivity between his country and the region, is taking just as many trips

as the U.S. president. And below Xi Jinping, when you look at it from, I guess, more of a functional divide, how would you characterize most of the Chinese presence or activity in the region? Is it mainly for economic purposes? I think obviously there's also concern of growing Chinese military presence in the region or military activities in the region. How would you

describe China's overall presence and how has that changed since compared to about a decade ago? Yeah, I think we need to look at this in phases. And I think that's how the Chinese have looked at their relationship with the broader region.

I would outline three distinct phases of China's approach to the region, and then I would kind of put a question mark next to what might be the fourth phase, where we don't really know where it's going. In the first phase, I think China is simply growing extremely quickly. This is during the famous Jiang Zemin going out strategy, where Chinese businesses are encouraged to internationalize.

to extend their arms to other regions of the world, both for growth markets, but also to become more internationally competitive. This is the period of time in the late 1990s and early 2000s when China finds a lot of economic complementarity with Latin America and the Caribbean. Simply put, what the region has in terms of

raw goods, commodities, and the contribution to global food security is what China needed at that time. As you well know, Barney, China has to feed a billion and a half people with only 10% of the world's arable land. It's a pretty unenviable position to be in. So countries like Brazil and Argentina, which can produce a whole bunch of soy, wheat, and other important agricultural foodstuffs, is key for China.

And during this period, China was growing incredibly rapidly. So that helped to forge these ties in phase one between the region and China. Phase two, I would say, started to take place under Xi. Right around the time that Xi assumed power in 2013, China begins to use some of its policy banks, the China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank.

to do more strategic type of relationship with the region. Some sovereign lending, some commodity-backed loans to select governments in the region. Venezuela notoriously got about $62, $63, $64 billion in financing. The Chinese are still regretting that to this day. Ecuador, Argentina, Peru, another set of countries that got quite a bit of financing, some of it commodity-backed, some of it sovereign lending.

And then in phase three, you have the start of the BRI, the Signature Foreign Policy and Economic Development Program launched under Xi. Panama was the first country to sign on in 2017. It first switched its recognition diplomatically from Taiwan to the PRC, and then it signs on to the BRI. Since then, so in a little over six years, you've had 22 countries of 26 eligible in the Western Hemisphere join the BRI.

You assume Canada and the US don't join, right? There are 35 countries in the Western hemisphere. Assume Canada and the US are not going to join anytime soon. That's 33. I mentioned in one of my previous answers that seven countries still recognize Taiwan. Obviously, a prerequisite of joining the BRI would be to switch your diplomatic recognition. So we say there are about 26 countries that are eligible to join the BRI at this time.

And in just over six years, you've had 22 of them join. I'd say that's pretty significant progress for China's signature Belt and Road Initiative. And phase four is really the question mark. What comes next as the BRI itself becomes less of a focus of Chinese foreign policy and engagement with the global south? What's the next phase? She has said that

He wants the Belt and Road Initiative to continue, but he wants it to be, it's going to be smaller, but it's going to be more beautiful in his words. What does that exactly mean for Latin America? We don't really know. And to what extent do Latin American countries participate in some of these other signature Chinese initiatives like the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative, the Global Civilization Initiative? It's unclear to what extent those are going to be attractive.

to Latin American countries. But up to this point, there's certainly been that economic complementarity, quite a bit of lending to the region. And then the BRI piece, of course, speaks to the region's need to build infrastructure to continue growing economically and to meet that infrastructure investment gap that it's suffered from for so many decades. And Ryan, what about China's military ties or military presence and activities in the region?

I would say, Bonnie, that this is a more recent phenomenon. The thing with China and military and defense cooperation in the region is that it's battling a very significant competitor in the U.S. in this space for many, many years. And still, South Com Southern Command is seen as the preferred security partner. The U.S. does security assistance in the region pretty well. It's had long-term bipartisan programs involved.

in Colombia, in Mexico, and a couple other countries. So for now, the US is still in the lead on defense and security cooperation.

But I would argue that the Chinese are making strides in this area. We produced a paper last year called Paper Tiger or Pacing Threat, which looked at the Chinese security and defense cooperation presence in the region. The Chinese are doing a number of things to compete. They are basically copying our defense.

military to military education programs, what's called IMET, International Military Education and Training. And they're trying to put even more money into it in areas where we haven't yet found good synergies with certain countries, or they're simply inviting more people to go and train in China on doctrine and other types of things.

And in other cases, they are using other types of assistance to try to compete with the United States. What I mean by that is the United States has a very good hold on defense cooperation and mil-to-mil cooperation.

But in some countries, we are not the preferred partner or countries are open to other partners in areas like security cooperation. That would be police training programs, for example, citizen security, going after organized crime groups in the region. I think the Chinese look at that as an opportunity

And Ryan, you mentioned that the United States is the preferred security partner for most countries. Would you say that China is the preferred economic partner for most countries and that from the region's perspective, China focuses more on Latin America than the United States or is...

Is it on the economic and political front? Is it quite mixed across the region? Well, the region rhetorically says that it would like to trade with all countries and keep an online stance. And so it likes to say that it's open to all types of investments. And a few countries in the region now have signed free trade agreements with both the PRC and the United States.

Historically, the US has been the number one trade partner and the majority of our free trade architecture is in the Western Hemisphere. Think about this, we've got free trade agreements with every single country on the Pacific coast

from the southern border of the United States down to the tip of Patagonia, with the exception of Ecuador, right, through multiple trade agreements. Again, the majority of the U.S. free trade architecture is in the Western Hemisphere. But there is this feeling, I think, in the region that China has prioritized it

in the last two decades in a way that the US hasn't. The US has signed a bunch of free trade agreements, but in countries like Peru and Chile and Colombia, there are conversations going on now about renegotiating some of those agreements because countries feel as though they didn't get the full set of benefits that they expected.

from them and they would like to renegotiate them in ways that could be more favorable either to those countries or to some of the social outcomes that they had hoped would be the benefit of those free trade arrangements. So I don't know if we can say that countries prefer to trade with China over the United States. Certainly in my travels throughout the region, countries are well aware of the dependencies that China creates and the way it looks upon dependencies as sources of economic

leverage. Countries in the region are not naive to how China has used economic dependency as leverage against countries like Australia, Lithuania, South Korea, and others. It's just that when we show up with those kinds of conversations in mind, usually our regional partners will say,

But what are you willing to offer as an alternative? And that's when things get a little bit more difficult, Bonnie, because we simply haven't opened up the toolkit in the way that I would like to have a full strategy for combating China's burgeoning influence in the Western Hemisphere. And so left with this void, a lot of countries have no choice but to take the Chinese offer because it's the only offer.

So from your perspective, the U.S. remains the preferred security partner and has significant historical, economic, and political connections with the region. But most countries sense that China provides more opportunity. Is that a correct assessment of where the balance is? I think it's fair to characterize it that way, Bonnie. And I think the thing that I would add is the reason that a lot of countries see China as an opportunity is that they're quick to deploy capital.

They can move quickly on infrastructure. They can get shovels in the ground much faster than the United States, if the United States is even interested in getting shovels in the ground in the first place. And that all aligns very nicely with the region's democratic election cycles. Remember that I mentioned this is the most democratic developing region in the world. You have to factor in that

Politicians in the region are running for reelection. Presidents in the region are running for reelection. Chinese projects give them the opportunity to point to things in a very tangible way and say that the country is moving in the right direction. All the better if it's a big, hard infrastructure project that people can see and benefit from.

And what about popular views of China, given what you mentioned in terms of what Chinese investments could bring, but also you mentioned the difference in political institutions within the region compared to China's system. How do those different factors and their interactions with Chinese businesses, how do they impact public views of China across the region? It's interesting because China had a, I would say, a fairly net positive view up until COVID-19.

And then once COVID hit, public perception of the PRC took a major hit, even though the PRC moved quickly to engage in vaccine diplomacy with the region and made very overt, ostensible displays of Chinese vaccine diplomacy vis-a-vis what was coming out of the US, which was more of a vaccine nationalism. The Chinese image in the region took a hit and it hasn't fully recovered

since then, and I doubt it will fully recover because the US messaging since the pandemic has been very anti-China, especially in the region. Now, it's also grading on citizens in the region when the only thing they hear from the US is the lesson that China creates dependencies, it uses economic

debt trap diplomacy, and so on. So I think eventually we're going to have to show up with more than just that message. But for now, I think we managed to kind of claw back some of the dents that China had made in the US image in the region. And now the region is more non-aligned, more interested in having engagement with both the United States and the PRC. Now, it's important, I think, to say, Bonnie, that culturally, so historically,

Putting aside for a second economic engagement, culturally, China feels very far from the region, right? The region's historic ties to the U.S., linguistic ties to the U.S. The U.S. is the fourth largest Spanish-speaking country in the world. All of the migratory trends that we share and on and on, that gives the U.S. really, I think,

unappreciated levels of influence in the region to keep that orientation in a north-south direction as opposed to an east-west direction. So if you poll people across the region, vast majorities of them are going to say they would much rather holiday in Orlando or go to Disney World or go to New York City

than to take a trip to Beijing. And it's been that way for a long time, and I suspect it will remain that way for a long time. But the US needs to capitalize on some of that built-in advantage that we have in the cultural, historic, linguistic migratory space.

And Ryan, you touched on some of the measures that the United States has taken to counter China's growing footprint and influence in the region, including sharing more information about problematic Chinese practices, but also sharing our perceptions of China. How else is the United States countering China's activities? Maybe this relates to what you were saying earlier, perhaps we're not doing enough in the region, but I just like your views on what we are currently doing, particularly vis-a-vis countering China.

Yeah, it's a good question, Bonnie. So we've had two administrations in a row where we've had some programs related to greater trade and economic integration that's meant to offer

what both administrations have said, high quality alternatives to Chinese investment. In the Trump administration, there was a program called America Crece or America Grows, which looked to bring a lot of private sector capital and deploy it in the region, setting up investment frameworks, setting up infrastructure investment frameworks specifically to try to meet that infrastructure gap that I mentioned.

in ways that would bring high quality Western capital to the region. With the Biden administration coming into office in 2020, there was a desire to put their own imprint on

This kind of agreement with the region and they started something called a pep America's partnership for economic prosperity This is an I path the end of Pacific economic framework and I path style Arrangement where there are various pillars with which you can engage. I think about 11 countries were initially offered a

a chance to participate in the APEP. Many of them were countries that already had free trade architecture with the United States, and this was meant to simply advance or catalyze even more economic activity with the region through this APEP initiative. It really didn't get off the ground until about the third year of the Biden administration. The president convened the first meeting of the APEP

with other regional leaders in November of last year. So it was a bit late in the game to start this initiative. And a lot of countries, we talked to them about why they're engaging, and they're engaging less with the expectation that it's going to massively catalyze US investment in the region. They're engaging more in the sense that it's a way to keep the US invested in the region. It's a way to keep the US thinking about trade and economic links

with the region and it gives them face time and that capacity with the leader of the United States. I expect that the Trump administration, the incoming Trump administration will have again its own version of how to engage with the region. It's probably going to feature a lot of development finance corporation,

lending. It's going to feature some assistance from the American Development Bank, perhaps some assistance from USAID. But by and large, Bonnie, we just haven't found a way in either recent administration to compete dollar for dollar, pound for pound with the PRC in a way that grabs the region's attention. I think the region is looking at domestic politics in the United States, and they're quite worried about the inability

some of these programs to carry forward beyond, say, four or eight years in a way that can really be sustainable, something that they can engage with long term and guarantee the type of investment that they're looking at. So right now we've done things, but we remain at the point where we're still kind of stumped about how to fully engage the US private sector in the region.

So Ryan, having our allies and partners in situations in which the United States is providing most of the security or is a preferred security partner of the region, but China has somewhat of an edge on the economic side, particularly in terms of larger scale investing, as well as the general trade relationship. That's not new. We see that across the board, including in the Indo-Pacific. I'm just wondering what makes the situation particularly difficult in Latin America, maybe

that perhaps the security cooperation that we're providing, would you say is not as important as the desire for more economic investment, economic deals? How do countries in the region balance what they're getting from the United States versus China, and which do they view as more important right now?

Yeah, it's a great question, Bonnie. I think while the U.S., of course, argues that the security assistance should be of top concern, I think it's fair to say that many countries in the region find the economic development piece to be the most important. If you look across the region, there are very few high-income countries. There are a few OECD members, Costa Rica, Chile, Mexico.

And they have attained upper income status. But for the most part, the region is middle income countries by World Bank definition, which means that they're stuck in a kind of middle income trap where they want to get their GDP per capita out of, say, the $5,000 to $7,000 or $8,000 per year range. And they want to get into that upper income category. And they've been frustrated for a few decades now that

They've done the types of things that generally lead to greater economic development. They've democratized. They've tried to build institutions. They have regular elections. They've tried to build better regulatory environments. And some countries remain rather stuck. And I think that's been one of the great frustrations in the region over the past, say, decade and a half is this sense that there is a pervading stagnation in the region and much of it is economic. And so

I think a lot of countries place the emphasis on we need economic development. We need to bring more people out of poverty. We need to bring more inclusive and sustainable growth, of course. And they don't pay enough attention to the security angle. And there are very significant issues.

security challenges in the region. If you just take a step back and look at violent crime in the region, we just published a report last week called Under the Gun, Weapons Trafficking in Latin America and the Caribbean. The region has only 8% of the world's population. It's about 650 to 700 million people, but it represents a third of global homicides.

This is not the kind of attractive headline that you want to bring more investment to your region. And it's not just that this activity is taking place in certain pockets of certain countries and can be avoided by those who are thinking about foreign direct investment and other development initiatives. In too many countries, it's everywhere. In a country like Mexico, for example, it's now clearly starting to affect the ability of the country to attract investment.

Under the Lopez Obrador administration, there were almost 100,000 cargo hijackings on Mexican highways and railways in his six-year term. That's unsustainable, Bonnie. That is a clear deterrent.

to investment. And it's a hard security issue that doesn't have to do with the inability or lack of interest in investing in a country like Mexico. It has to do with getting security cooperation right, working with the Americans to try to deploy police and intelligence to the proper areas of the country to get after entrenched corruption and so on. But if we neglect that, we get that kind of situation proliferating in too many countries around the region in ways that then start to affect

the investment picture and the willingness of companies and countries to invest their capital in these types of environments when there are other places that could put their money and make money. So I

I would argue that the security picture is fundamental or integral with plenty of nexies to the financial and economic picture. But countries, given a binary choice between the two, have generally tended to prioritize the economic over the security and thus kind of the China angle to development and economic partnership over the U.S. angle to security cooperation.

And speaking of the China angle to economic development, I'd like to get your thoughts on Chinese leader Xi Jinping's visit to the region recently to attend both the APEC and G20 summits. We saw there's been quite a bit of reporting on this, and I think you were also featured quite heavily in the media on this. But I was stunned by the photos of the APEC meeting in which Xi was front and center and Biden was in the back. And so

And supposedly it was because the leaders were standing in alphabetical order. But again, that could just be an excuse for that photo. How do you assess Xi's recent trip to the region? And do you think his recent trip broke any new grounds or really significantly advanced China's presence as well as influence in the region? Yeah, it's a great question, Bonnie. And let's start with that photo as metaphor for Xi overshadowing Biden on the trip.

Well, it looks as though, in fact, it is alphabetical in terms of the ordering of the leaders at the APEC meeting. I think it's still quite metaphorical that Biden was in the back row and she was in the front row, right next to Peruvian President Dina Boloarte. He did, in fact, several weeks ago, inaugurate the Chiang Kai-Mei port, which is a signature BRI infrastructure project in the region. It's something that goes back to 2016 when they first started talking about it and then was signed under a BRI framework.

Later, this is something that's going to enhance connectivity, the Chinese say, with South America. It's supposed to shorten the trip of important commodities and foodstuffs by about 10 days. Currently, out of the port structures that exist in the region, things have to leave out of Colombia or out of Chile. They generally have to go to Mexico or to LA first.

before they can then continue on to mainland China. With the Changkai port, they'll be able to go directly to mainland China. And they've also engaged in certain cabotage agreements with other ports in the region. What that's going to mean is that things can load at those ports

go to Chiang Kai for transshipment and then avoid some of the paperwork that would otherwise have to occur at Chiang Kai in order to transship those goods to mainland China. So they've effectively been able to write out or to remove the need to go to Mexico or to go to LA before going to the mainland China. And then they're creating greater connectivity with some of the other ports that they run in Latin America. And the fact that this was

Probably the main reason why Xi went to APEC this year was to inaugurate this port. It was a pretty big deal. Getting back to my point before, Bonnie, about security, you will note that Xi inaugurated the port in Chiang Kai virtually. And the reason that he inaugurated it virtually is that there has been a number of security incidents in Lima and in the surrounding areas around Lima where the Chiang Kai port is located.

Such that buses have been hijacked, cars have been hijacked. The local government has actually declared a state of emergency. And so they've decided that the best thing to do was to inaugurate it virtually as opposed to going out to Chiang Kai, which is just a small fishing village that is now going to get this influx of Chinese capital and Chinese workers and Chinese investments.

So that was a huge part of the visit. And it was another way for Xi to signal to the region that we haven't forgotten about you, even though BRI is slowing down and the future of BRI is still in question, we are still willing to carry out some of these strategic investments in the way that the US hasn't yet done so. And this port is going to be something we're talking about for

for probably a decade or two to come. It's that important in terms of connecting mainland China to a lot of countries in South America. It's not just Peru that will benefit from this, the other countries that have ports on the Pacific side, and then countries like Brazil are talking about building road infrastructure out to the port so that they can get goods through Chiang Kai as well. The visit was significant in Brazil as well in terms of advancing China's position for two reasons.

First, after the G20 summit, the Biden and Xi governments were both offered, and this is according to the Brazilian government, both leaders were offered the chance to stick around and have a state visit with Brazilian President Lula da Silva.

The United States allegedly told Brazil that the president can't fit another day in South America in his schedule. He flew home on the 19th of November. She stuck around on the 20th of November for a state visit. So another perfect example of how presence matters and how the lack of ability and desire of U.S. presidents to spend time in the region is hurting the U.S. cause and advance of our strategic interest. At that state visit,

She and Lula unveiled a number of agreements that I think were notable. I won't highlight them all here, but I think the most important one to note is actually a loan from the PRC to Brazil's domestic development bank, which is called BNDES.

And it's being done in Remedy. Right. So this is all it hits on China. The important part of China's strategy of internationalizing its currency. It speaks to Brazil's desire to do more deals and currencies outside of the U.S. dollar. It speaks to the BRICS.

late motive of doing more outside of dollar denominated frameworks. And it's a significant line of credit for domestic Brazilian development projects through its national development bank. So those types of agreements were signed at the state visit. I wish Biden would have stuck around and had an equal number of things to sign and to present to Lula. But unfortunately, on this trip,

I think she got the best of the US presence and it seemed in both locations, Bonnie, the US was overshadowed by the PRC.

Ryan, could you talk a little bit about what President Biden did bring to the region? I read it was Apache helicopters for security purposes. What did he actually bring? That's right, Bonnie. There were some critical materials in the security cooperation domain. The Apache helicopters got the headlines. In the news stories, there was also Biden

The day in between APEC and G20, he went to Manaus, an important city in the Amazon, and he had a meeting with indigenous tribes in the Amazon promising greater US cooperation on environmental preservation. He also promised, I think it was 50 million for the Amazon fund. I don't

I don't know that he can actually produce that money before he leaves office. And I doubt that the incoming Trump administration has an interest in following through on that promise. But I think that was his main kind of signature offer was some on the security assistance side. And then the visit to Manaus was important for the administration, not just because he was the first president to go to the Amazon since Teddy Roosevelt. And he went there when he was no longer president.

But also Biden highlighted the importance of next year's COP summit, which will be held not in Manaus, but another Amazonian city called Belém. So it seems like, Ryan, in terms of the dollar value of what President Biden bought, what we bought was what in the tens of millions, whereas the Chinese were inaugurating a 3.6 billion port.

Sure. The port, they say it will be 3.6 billion in the end. At present, it's a little over 1 billion in investment. Chinese say that they are going to continue building out the port. Huawei is already there to try to build some of the smart infrastructure. Of course, you've got cranes and other types of things that need to be built at a port of this size, which will mostly be Chinese investment.

For the moment, it's well over a billion, but not yet at its three or more billion total investment. But the point is made that China is willing to throw lots of money into big infrastructure projects, and the US is still looking to find a solution and an answer to a lot of these advances.

So can I ask you, if the region is mainly looking at China for investments and more trade deals, is there any concern that as China's economic growth slows and as China faces issues at home, that China can't deliver on some of the promises that it may have provided?

It's a good question, Bonnie. I think that there is a recognition in the region that China is not the panacea. And quite a few countries, even though they're China friendly, especially in economic relations, understand that China can't be the entire answer. And that's why you hear so many countries talking about diversification of partners.

non-alignment as a way that the region can build a kind of foreign policy doctrine that allows it to work with all sides. There's also been significant interest in engaging not just Europe, but also other Asian partners. The Japanese are pretty well invested.

in Latin America. If you look at Japanese FDI flows over the last 10 years, they're pretty strong. South Korea is getting quite interested in investing in some sectors in the region. Actually Taiwan, in a number of countries, even those that don't recognize Taiwan formally, Bonnie,

has a presence in a very kind of subtle way in some important sectors. So I think the region understands the importance of diversification and also not betting too much on China. But for now, I think it feels as though in some of these industries and also in the large infrastructure space, China is the only game in town.

I will say this, one of the other things that the PRC has talked about, and especially Xi, has been what he calls new infrastructure. Investing in areas that, frankly, the US should be competing in. It's not the large infrastructure areas where we're having trouble deploying capital, but areas where the US is, frankly, quite dominant.

AI, telecom sector, university cooperation in science and technology, cloud computing, robotics. These are the types of things that China is now leading with in some of its investment schemes in the region, and the region is happy to cooperate.

on those things too. But those are areas where the US has a lot of strengths, and we should definitely be competing in a more vigorous fashion there because that's actually playing on our home turf. Semiconductor cooperation, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, telecommunications sector, these are areas where we compete very effectively, much more so than the build out of large infrastructure projects.

And one more question, Ryan, on U.S. versus Chinese influence in the region. Is there a sense that even though the United States is the preferred security partner,

and we're trying to help countries deal with their internal security issues. But the region isn't doing better domestically on dealing with crime, violence, and other issues. In other words, the United States is not that successful. Whereas in terms of China's investment, they're more judged by if the road or the port that they promised have been built. In other words, Chinese development projects may not always be complete or successful, but it's more tangible and concrete.

I think that's right, Bonnie. In general, there have been certain cases that we can point to as kind of archetypal cases of Chinese development gone wrong. And I'll get into one or two of those in a second. But in general, I think the Chinese have benefited from the perception that their partnership is bringing value to

to the region because it's very tangible. You build a bridge, you build a road, you build an airport, you build a port, and it's very visible. Even if it's not a perfect port, a perfect airport, a perfect road, it's still better than not having that in the minds of many in the region. Security cooperation is a much more difficult thing to success in that area, is a much more difficult thing to quantify. It's a much more difficult thing to see.

And also, frankly, the challenge is so much harder. I mean, security as an issue is such a deep area of study. We're still figuring out certain things about, you know, what causes so much violence and insecurity in the region that I think it's inevitable that, you know, there are going to be mixed results of U.S. security cooperation.

in the region. And there's also just such a kind of sui generis element to it. Like what makes Mexico insecure is not the same thing as what makes Ecuador or Colombia insecure. And so whereas, you know, a port might be built the same way in two different countries, security cooperation and security assistance cannot be. I think the U.S. is just playing a more difficult game than the PRC is. And of course, we suffer the consequences.

I also think that the fact that the US hasn't been successful in all cases of security cooperation, by the way, I would argue that we have been successful in certain cases.

The partnership with Colombia has been fundamental to remaking Colombia as a modern 21st century country capable of defending its own sovereignty against guerrilla groups in the country, which plagued that country for a long time. I would argue that there are certain qualified successes we've achieved in bilateral security cooperation with Mexico as well, even though there's still much work to be done.

But some of the perceived failures of those overall security cooperation programs are what has allowed the Chinese, at least a slight door, ajar to be able to come in and point to the lack of success of US policies and say, why don't you try Chinese security assistance? By the way, we're safe and secure at home through all these initiatives that we have through smart cities, through other uses of technology.

We can send that technology to you and you can see if it works for you. That's one thing. The part that I also said I would mention, Bonnie, is there's been plenty of stories in the region of bad Chinese development projects. It hasn't been simply success after success after success. Much as it's been in other developing regions of the world, there have been these kind of archetypal cases of things that the U.S. can point to time and again.

to show nightmare projects. I think the best one and the real tragedy in the region is the is the Coca-cola Sinclair Dam in Ecuador, which as of this podcast recording probably has more than 20,000 cracks in it and continuing to grow more cracks by the day. It doesn't generate the type of electricity that this hydroelectric dam was supposed to generate.

It is causing environmental damage in indigenous areas in the country. And the Chinese company that built it, Chinese Sinohydro, is under all sorts of investigations in the region for shady practices. There are several presidents who stand accused of taking money.

on the backs of this deal. And so that is just such a typical project that we can point to and say, this is what Chinese development initiatives under a BRI lens look like gone wrong. It remains to be seen whether Chiang Kai or any of the other projects we've talked about in this podcast fall into that category.

But it's not an unqualified string of successes for the PRC as well. They've made plenty of mistakes, and those mistakes have been well publicized by the U.S. government and well tracked. Excellent. Thank you so much, Ryan. I'd like to ask you one more question to wrap up this podcast. You talked about the four phases in China's outreach to the region and what is currently shaping up as a potential fourth phase.

What are you most worried about in terms of China's growing influence in the region? And what should the United States do about it?

It's a great question, Bonnie. I'm worried about the muscle memory, I would call it, in the region. I think the long-term risk is that the region moves away from a kind of north-south orientation, which has characterized its foreign policy and its development in economic thinking for so long and permanently becomes a kind of east-west orientation, the muscle memory, if you will.

changes entirely. And I think we're at risk of seeing this if we don't come up with a viable set of alternatives to Chinese investment and Chinese development initiatives and eventually security initiatives as well in the region. So it's really an all-of-government approach that I would recommend to the incoming

Trump administration that it needs to kind of move the region away from what could become an east-west orientation. When if you look at this region, you look at the historical, linguistic, migratory trends and connections to the United States, you would see there's no reason that the Western Hemisphere shouldn't be north-south in its orientation, shouldn't be incredibly linked through all sorts of initiatives to the United States. And yet this strategic neglect that we've been practicing for so long.

may well lead the region to change its entire

wiring its entire muscle memory, if you will, to look to China for the solutions on most of its challenges. So unfortunately, it doesn't fall into any one kind of neat category of concerns or neat policy recommendation. It's really an overall recommendation. We need a strategy to push back on burdening Chinese influence in the region. And we need one that is realistic. What I mean by that, Bonnie, is

There are some scholars that suggest that China can simply be extricated from the region. I think that's a bit naive. I mean, China has rapidly become the region's second largest trade partner. And if you take out Mexico, of course, all the trade flows between the US and Mexico, it emerges as the region's number one trade partner.

So you don't just simply extricate or take out the region's number two trade partner and number one if you're not including Mexico. We need a realistic strategy for pushing back on Chinese influence while still recognizing that China is going to be a player in Latin America and the Caribbean for a whole number of reasons. And that's something our program has been pretty focused on for the last few years is developing a reasonable strategy that can

can be implemented, that can meet partners where they're at in the region. And that is also realistic about the type of resourcing that we're likely to get from the US government for say the DFC or the Inter-American Development Bank or USAID given strained budgets and the likelihood that resources go to other theaters of the world more rapidly than they would go to Latin America and the Caribbean.

Thank you, Ryan, for sharing your assessment on growing Chinese activities in Latin America and your view of U.S. neglect toward the region. To see more of what Ryan and his team have developed in terms of recommendations for the next U.S. administration for Latin America, please check out the CSIS America program's work on China and its activities in the region.

Thanks again, Bonnie. And to our listeners, since you've already plugged the work, I would just say there's one report in particular. It's called Insulate, Curtail, Compete. It's a neat three-word strategy. That's what we've put together as of last year in terms of that workable, realistic strategy for the region. Ryan, thank you again for joining me today.