Dialogue, Not Competition

Western media outlets such as the New York Times framed the summit as China’s attempt to “woo” Latin America away from the United States, helped along by Donald Trump’s tariffs war. One report in the BBC went as far as to describe Latin America as the US’s  “backyard” and suggested that its abandonment of the region had opened the door to Chinese influence. Little attention is paid in these narratives to the political agency of Latin American and Caribbean nations, whose intentions and motivations are far more complex than these accounts make out.

It is more accurate to attribute the increasingly close relations between Latin America and the Caribbean to the Pink Tide, the rise in left-leaning governments that have emphasized sovereignty and South-South cooperation from the first decade of the century. A recent study published by the Center for Latin American Studies (CEL) suggests that China’s growing presence in the region has helped to foster redistributive policies and progressive governance. Led by the late Hugo Chávez, Venezuela was the first Latin American nation to develop a strategic partnership with China. This relationship made possible massive investments in health, housing, technology, and education. These gains, made in the face of unrelenting Western hostility, demonstrate that alternative development paths are possible, although they rest on fragile foundations.

Despite protracted struggles for power between progressive and right-wing governments across much of the region, relations between Latin America, the Caribbean, and China have continued to disrupt the region’s status quo. The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) itself, founded in 2010 during the peak of the Pink Tide movement to counter the US-controlled Organization of American States (OAS), first convened with China in 2015. The recent forum only makes sense when viewed in the context of this decades-long trajectory of seeking greater autonomy from the United States by developing relations with other states.

Addressing the most recent forum, Colombian president Gustavo Petro, currently serving as the pro tempore president of CELAC, said that the people of Latin America and the Caribbean should be seen as being at “center of the world” rather than on the periphery. In place of these regions having a subordinate relationship to Western powers, he called instead for a relationship of equals that would foster dialogue, rather than clashes, between civilizations. This was pitched as an alternative to the US-led approach to global politics that promotes competition and rivalry between nations. Crucially, the speech called for a new dialogue to tackle climate change and other pressing issues.

Carlos Carrillo Arenas, a minister in Petro’s government and a delegate to the forum, said that Colombia and the wider region are “shaking off [their] subordination, of essentially behaving like a tributary state of the United States, to truly become an equal partner.” For Carrillo, known in Colombia for cracking down on the country’s traditional elites for misappropriation of public funds, developing closer relations with China is “an opportunity to cooperate with different poles, with different powers . . . but based on a framework of deep mutual respect.”

While growing ties between China and Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) nations represent a partial break from US dominance of the region, they do not break entirely with the patterns of dependency that defined that relationship. Latin American and Caribbean nations have largely failed to diversify their economies. Even under progressive leadership, state revenues continue to depend on the exports of low-value goods and volatile commodity markets, ultimately running into vulnerabilities that right-wing elites have always exploited in close coordination with Washington.

Over the past two decades, many LAC nations have indeed experienced tangible gains from relations with China. These benefits have come without the imposition of neoliberal conditionalities or demands for political alignment. Yet as long as the region’s economic model remains rooted in serving the interests of more powerful global economies, the long-term risk of structural dependency persists. This is a challenge not only for reformist administrations like Petro’s but also for more radical projects such as Venezuela’s, whose transformative aspirations have been constrained by both internal contradictions and external siege.

But just as relations with China are not inherently emancipatory, neither are they inherently belligerent — the alarm is generally unfounded. In a recent article, Richard L. Harris, coordinating editor of Latin American Perspectives, points out that the elephant in the room in most discussions about LAC-China relations is the enduring economic asymmetries between the United States and Europe. In other words, those who appear most alarmed — the same outlets and their experts who view China’s growing presence in the LAC as a threat — have nothing critical to say about the glaring and more asymmetric relations between the US and Europe.

Carrillo Arenas suggests that Latin America, and especially countries like Colombia, are today engaging with powerful nations like China on more equal footing than had previously done with the United States. The Colombian minister argues that although there is the possibility of continued subjugation to external powers, it is also important to keep in mind that “our Latin American countries today have developed institutions that are solid enough to ensure that, in a process of cooperation and mutual benefit, we do not end up with idle infrastructure or other such burdens.” He adds that, unlike “the United States, which has maintained a consistently interventionist policy in Latin American countries . . . [China] demands respect for their internal affairs from other countries whilst showing respect for the internal affairs of others.”

Indeed, while progressive governments in countries like Colombia may be able to leverage national institutions to secure more equitable relations with foreign powers, the deeper question is whether they can implement the structural changes necessary for deeper and more long-term transformation. This is an issue for Petro’s government as well as Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution, which has found more permanent stability elusive. The region’s economies remain bound to an economic model of exporting low-value or volatile primary goods, with all the long-term risk of structural dependency that this perpetuates.

Ultimately, it is only through the continued mobilization of mass movements and their articulation within state power that the region can push beyond structural dependency. Whether China proves a genuine partner in this process or simply the latest external actor to benefit from Latin America’s resources will depend less on Beijing’s intentions and more on the political will and capacity of the region’s own governments and peoples to define the terms of engagement.