A Chinese policy paper calls for stronger economic and other ties with Latin America and the Caribbean. The feeling seems mutual.
China released a white paper in December outlining plans to expand and deepen its relationship with Latin America. From a well-established base in trade and investment in natural resources and infrastructure, Beijing hopes to venture more boldly into science, technology, and more, involving strategic sectors such as the military, police, space, digital technologies, and AI.
Released by China’s State Council, whose duties include drafting bills for submission to the National People’s Congress and preparing the national economic plan and state budget, the policy paper sends “a signal that complements the approach China has been taking in Latin America over the last decade,” says Luis Esnal, Lisbon-based CEO of the international intelligence company Nexointell. The message, he says, is that “the country is no longer a simple exporter of cheap goods that cannibalize local industries. It wants to present itself as a powerful ally, committed to commercial diplomacy and pragmatism.”
This is the third such document, following editions in 2008 and 2016.
“Historically, China’s policy white papers have been good road maps for predicting Beijing’s areas of focus in engaging with the region,” writes R. Evan Ellis, research professor of Latin American studies at the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College, in The Diplomat, a publication specializing in Asia-Pacific affairs.
But if the latest paper looks like a road map to Ellis, “it’s not a blueprint,” cautions Eric Olander, Ho Chi Minh City-based editor in chief of the China-Global South Project, a multimedia initiative. “Policy papers that the Chinese put out are indicative of the broad thinking of the Chinese establishment. There are not a lot of details. You must read between the lines, as with the US.”
The paper dropped on the heels of the latest US National Security Strategy report, which reasserted the Monroe Doctrine. The policy from 1823, publicly disavowed by the Obama administration, places Latin America under the US geopolitical sphere of influence.
“There are people who see it as a response,” says Claudia Trevisan, executive director of the Brazil-China Business Council (CEBC).
Not veteran observers such as Trevisan. Far from a quick riposte, the Chinese document features ideas that have already been expounded publicly. “They started working on it a year ago,” says Olander. “The two are not connected.”
“In China, we were joking about that,” says Yanran Xu, associate professor at the School of International Studies at Renmin University of China. “It’s so much of a coincidence.”
Governance, Development, Civilization, Security
The white paper’s foundations appeared in last year’s China-CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) Joint Action Plan for Cooperation in Key Areas (2025-2027). That document enumerates hundreds of projects, boosted credit lines, and more Latin American involvement with China’s global infrastructure scheme, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Like it, the State Council has five designated programs: solidarity, development, civilization, peace, and people-to-people cooperation.
Both papers lean heavily on China’s four ongoing global initiatives for international affairs: governance, development, civilization, and security. The BRI, too, gets its honorable mention. But the new document reflects the evolution of China and its ambitions.
“The 2016 and 2025 policy papers are different because China is very different,” Trevisan observes. “China has made a huge jump in technology.” In Brazil, China is making noise in wind energy, battery storage, electric vehicles, and medical technology, among other sectors, she notes.
The flagship endeavor is Chinese automaker BYD’s new electric-vehicle factory in Camacari, in Brazil’s eastern state of Bahia. With an investment of more than $1 billion, it is the company’s largest plant outside of Asia. During a ribbon-cutting ceremony in October, Brazilian Vice President Geraldo Alckmin hailed BYD for joining the New Brazilian Industry project, designed to promote domestic manufacturing.
20 Years Of Trade Growth
As recently as the 1990s, China was “avoiding Latin America, thinking of it as America’s backyard,” notes John Price, managing director of Americas Market Intelligence, a consultancy headquartered outside Miami, Florida. After China’s accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001, commerce with Latin America exploded from $12 billion in 2000 to $315 billion in 2020, according to the World Economic Forum.
Growth continues apace. Trade hit $565 billion in 2025, up 6.5% over 2024, outshining China’s trade boom elsewhere in the world, according to numbers released in February by the Chinese government. The total rang in above the $500 billion mark for the second straight year.
A whirlwind romance, perhaps, but one rooted in rational self-interest. “China is capital rich and resource poor,” Olander observes. “Latin America is resource rich and capital poor.”
But iron ore and soybeans aren’t easy to slog halfway around the world.
“To get product from the hinterland to Shanghai, Latin America needed better infrastructure,” Price recalls. That sparked Chinese investment in roads, ports, and railways. As part of the global BRI, these projects help soak up Chinese overcapacity in sectors such as construction and engineering.
The December white paper goes a step further, calling attention to sectors such as AI and renewable energy, where China has or can develop competitive advantages. While focusing on the economic sphere, they are asking, “What can China do as a rising power?” says Xu. By contrast, many analysts, especially in the US, are homing in on elements that could create friction between the superpowers. Military and police cooperation and space exploration top that list.
Discussion of the paper often pulls in sensitive topics not highlighted in the document. These include diplomatic recognition of Taiwan as well as access to and control of the Panama Canal. Latin America is home to seven of the 12 countries around the world that still recognize Taipei, and there is speculation that Honduras might backtrack from its 2023 move to embrace the mainland. The involvement of Chinese companies in port contracts in Panama has engendered diplomatic and legal spats.
If its reaction to the US operation in Venezuela is any indication, however, China is “not going to antagonize the US” in the region, Xu says.
In Olander’s view, “They did not wake up [Chinese President Xi Jinping] at two in the morning” to tell him about Venezuela. “If it were Vietnam, Xi would be woken up.” Venezuela and the region are “not tier-one important.”
When it comes to Latin America, “We still care mostly about our economic interests,” adds Xu.
So do most Latin Americans, apparently, including the wave of right-leaning leaders who have recently won elections. Soon after taking office last November, a minister in Bolivia’s centrist government stressed that the country would honor all existing contracts to deliver hydrocarbons and lithium, notably those with Russia and China.
“Ideology doesn’t put food on the table; we cannot, out of ideological or geopolitical zeal, act otherwise,” Minister of Hydrocarbons and Energy Mauricio Medinaceli told Reuters.
Even the most ardent of the lot appear acquiescent.
“Proof of this is the government of [Argentine President] Javier Milei,” says Nexointell’s Esnal, himself an Argentine native. “After calling China a ‘murderous communist dictatorship’ during his campaign, upon taking office, he maintained and increased his relationship with China. He had no other choice.”
