China’s Push to Dominate Latin America Enters New Localized Phase

For years, China made megaprojects the centerpiece of its Latin American strategy. It poured billions into building massive infrastructure projects across the continent—dams in Ecuador, railways in Colombia and Argentina, telecommunications networks in Brazil and the enormous Chancay Port in Peru.

The goal was simple: establish leverage over Latin American governments, lock up resources for China, capture new markets for Chinese companies, and then turn all that leverage and economic power into geopolitical might.

For the Chinese Communist Party, the strategy paid off. It gave China a robust economic foothold across Latin America from which it can advance its long-term strategic goals.

But in recent years, the geopolitical landscape has changed.

The Trump administration in the United States warned in 2017 that China was striving to “pull the region into its orbit through state-led investments and loans.” It began warning Latin American governments about Chinese infrastructure and telecommunications projects, challenging Beijing’s growing strategic foothold in the region.

Since returning to office in 2025, President Trump has dramatically intensified the U.S. response. His administration has revoked visas from Latin American authorities beholden to Beijing, targeted Chinese telecom projects across the region, and even pressured the Panamanian government to break up Chinese control of key ports along the canal. In January, the U.S. went further still, using military force to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, a longtime Chinese ally and one of Beijing’s closest partners in the region.

The intensifying pressure from the U.S. has clearly gotten the attention of the Chinese Communist Party. But it has not convinced its leaders to abandon their Latin American ambitions. Instead, the Chinese have shifted away from highly visible, multibillion-dollar megaprojects. Now, their approach is becoming quieter, more localized and, in some ways, harder to see.

The Chinese are now “pioneering a kind of statecraft that privileges quiet, subnational capture over big, flashy projects,” Foreign Affairs wrote last week.

Expansion Without the Fanfare

Rather than megaprojects, China is now embedding itself in Latin America through smaller, quieter ventures—often at the municipal and provincial levels.

In several Argentine provinces, Chinese companies are moving deep into the lithium industry, developing mines and processing facilities to extract lithium from the nation’s vast salt flats. This is no ordinary commodity: Lithium is a vital ingredient in the batteries that power electric vehicles, energy-storage systems and other technologies expected to shape the coming decades.

In Lima, Peru, Chinese companies have quietly gained control of the city’s entire electricity-distribution system. China Three Gorges acquired a controlling stake in Luz del Sur in 2020, giving it the electricity networks serving much of southern Lima. In 2024, China Southern Power Grid bought Enel’s Peruvian distribution business, which serves northern Lima. Together, the two Chinese companies now control 100 percent of Lima’s electricity-distribution market—a remarkable position to hold in one of Latin America’s largest cities.

At the same time, all across Latin America, Chinese companies have moved into another sensitive arena: policing and public security. They have supplied local governments with riot-control equipment, as well as cameras, facial-recognition systems and other surveillance technology—sometimes at heavily discounted prices or even free. Municipalities in countries including Ecuador, Guyana and Suriname have adopted Chinese “Safe City” systems, while similar equipment is spreading through cities elsewhere in the region. These systems can link vast networks of cameras with facial recognition, license-plate readers and other analytical tools, giving local authorities unprecedented ability to track people and monitor public spaces.

Taken individually, each measure may not seem particularly consequential. But that is exactly what makes them effective. These smaller endeavors draw little scrutiny or backlash from the Western Hemisphere’s heavyweight. And hundreds of them are underway across Latin America, the accumulation of which weaves an intricate web of dependence on China.

Foreign Affairs writes:

Beijing’s security provisions … mean that plenty of Latin American cities and provinces now effectively rely on China for their law enforcement and emergency response infrastructure, and, in Lima’s case, electricity infrastructure. It is a dependence that many national politicians never intended and may not even have seen coming. They may not be aware of the potential risks associated with this level and type of dependence and may not be prepared to manage the potential fallout.

The risks may not always be immediately apparent, but they are real. If a government—whether municipal, provincial or national—takes a position contrary to China’s interests, the Chinese can withhold spare parts, software updates and technical expertise that may be difficult or impossible to obtain elsewhere. What began as an ordinary business relationship can suddenly become a sharp tool of political leverage.

And China has built hundreds of such relationships across Latin America. That gives Beijing a vast network of economic ties that could, when political interests collide, be turned into significant pressure.

To understand just how dramatically China has shifted to this new, more localized and low-key approach, we need only look at spending figures. In 2010, Chinese state-backed lending to Latin America peaked at nearly $25 billion to governments across the region. That was the model that would later become known as China’s Belt and Road Initiative—massive state-backed loans financing massive infrastructure projects.

Chinese state-backed lending stayed at high levels through the middle of the decade before falling sharply. Today, that figure is down to just $1.3 billion per year. But Chinese companies are still pumping substantial amounts of money into the region. In 2024, they invested at least $8.5 billion in Latin America. And analysts agree that even this impressive figure omits billions of dollars of Chinese activity, since much of it is now harder to track. Many of the modern deals are “shrouded in confidentiality clauses, and often surface only when a local journalist finds the contract,” Foreign Affairs writes.

So what has changed is not so much the flow of Chinese capital to Latin America as the way it enters the region. Instead of the government officially financing enormous new projects through sovereign loans, it is now increasingly Chinese companies that use smaller commercial deals.

And remember that in China, even privately owned companies operate at the pleasure of the state. By law, they are obliged to obey the Chinese Communist Party’s diktats and further its interests. As Big Data China wrote in a 2023 analysis: “[P]articularly under Xi Jinping’s rule, there has been an even greater attempt by the political leadership to increase their control over the private sector, reduce its political influence, and ensure its loyalty to the system.”

With this shift in Latin America, Chinese firms are quietly doing what the government once did openly. They are expanding the Chinese Communist Party’s power over the continent without the fanfare that surrounded the old era.

‘Latin America’s Strategic Position’

China’s deepening foothold in Latin America takes on a profound significance when viewed through the lens of Bible prophecy. More than 2,500 years ago, God inspired the Prophet Isaiah to write about a vast anti-American trade alliance that would take shape in the modern era. In Isaiah 23:3, it is referred to as a “mart of nations.”

Verse 1 names “Chittim” as one of the primary powers in this bloc. Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry explains in his booklet Isaiah’s End-Time Vision that Chittim, or Kittim, is an ancient name referring to modern China:

Kittim is synonymous with the Chittim of Isaiah’s prophecy. … After their migration through Central Asia, the Kittim made their appearance in modern-day northeastern China and Mongolia under the name of Khitan in the fourth century a.d.

The scriptures make plain that China will have many partners in this alliance.

Isaiah 23 names “Tyre” as another lead player in the “mart of nations.” Mr. Flurry explains that this name signifies modern Europe’s “commercial center.” He writes:

The spiritual center of the [modern European] Holy Roman Empire is called Babylon in your Bible (Revelation 17:5; 18:1-3). But here in Isaiah, the Bible refers to Tyre (and its allies Zidon, etc) as the commercial center of this European power. By understanding the spiritual and the commercial powers, you can understand what a colossus is rising in Europe.

This chapter and a companion passage in Ezekiel 27 list ancient names for modern Russia and Japan, showing that they too will play a role in this colossal trade bloc.

The Scriptures show that ties between these Asian and European nations will strengthen in the years ahead as they turn decisively against the U.S. and some of its allies. “China and the giants of Asia” will form a “brief alliance” with the German-led European bloc, Mr. Flurry writes. “All of them are going to besiege America, Britain and the Jewish nation.”

He explains that Latin America will play a crucial role in this siege, particularly as European nations come to exert more influence over it. Mentioning prophecies by the late educator Herbert W. Armstrong, Mr. Flurry writes:

Herbert Armstrong long prophesied, and we expect, the alliance between Europe and South America to grow extremely strong.

European countries are already building major influence over much of Latin America. And after China enters this “brief alliance” with Europe, the power the Chinese are currently building across the continent—including with quieter subnational ventures—will translate into even mightier European influence over the region.

With this level of influence across Latin America, the Asian and European nations will be strategically positioned to lay siege to the United States. “With a German-led Europe … possessing great maritime power, North America will be surrounded on the east by Europe and the south by Latin America” (ibid).

In the Trumpet’s March 2019 issue, Mr. Flurry further stressed the pivotal role Latin America will play in this future siege: “Look at these prophecies in light of Latin America’s strategic position. America cannot truly be besieged unless Latin America is part of it.”

In the near term, these trends point toward an unspeakable catastrophe for America and some of its allies. Yet the Bible that foretells this coming crisis also reveals what lies beyond it: Following the siege and fall of the United States and Britain will come the most peaceful and prosperous era in human history.

“[T]hat trading partnership won’t last long,” Mr. Flurry writes of the Asian-European bloc. “Soon they will clash, just before Jesus Christ returns and destroys both of them” (op cit).

Christ will return to Earth and put an end to mankind’s cycle of rivalry, conflict and self-destruction. He will usher in an age of unprecedented peace, prosperity and abundance for Latin America, China and the whole world.

To learn more about what Bible prophecy reveals about China’s growing presence in Latin America—and where these developments ultimately lead—order your free copy of Isaiah’s End-Time Vision.