Leading international experts analyze important Chinese documents and policies.

Newly translated documents discussed in these analyses include:

1. The Policy Logic of Latin American Countries’ Responses to China-U.S. Competition by Fang Xiao, Assistant Research Fellow, Institute of Latin American Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
2. Brazil’s International Strategic Dilemma in the Shadow of U.S. Hegemony by Wang Huan, Associate Research Fellow, Office of American Political Studies, Institute of American Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
3. The Rise of the New Right in Latin America: Manifestations, Causes, and Prospects by Yang Shouguo, Chief Researcher, Institute of Latin American Studies, China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations.

Jump to commentary from:

Leland Lazarus | Alonso Illueca | Constanza Mazzina

When I read these three articles, three questions came to mind: 

1. What surprised me about the author’s perspective? 

2. What did the authors leave unsaid? Chinese culture often stresses 言外之意 or 话里话外, essentially that there are always hidden meaning behind what is said, and even more so what is left unsaid. 

3. What are the implications for Chinese foreign policy? 

Yang Shouguo’s article on the rise of the New Right surprised me because of the complexity and nuance he uses to describe the evolution of the New Right. The local need for law and order and suppressing crime, the “lost decade” of economic growth, and the frustration of corrupt political elites have all combined to fuel the rise of the New Right. Trumpism in the United States is just an additional factor. I found that assessment refreshing, because it runs counter to the mainstream narrative we consistently hear from Western media that New Right leaders are simply the Latin American versions of Trump. 

What didn’t surprise me was Fang Xiao and Wang Huan essentially laying the blame of shifting relations between China and Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) and Brazil’s inability to become a true great power at the feet of the United States. To be sure, LAC countries are facing severe U.S. pressure under the “Donroe Doctrine” to choose sides. Fang Xiao rightly categorizes LAC countries into two buckets: smaller countries that have no choice but to “bandwagon” with the United States (like Panama) and larger countries that have more economic and political independence to practice “balanced diplomacy” (like Brazil). Wang Huan specifically cites a quote from another author that Brazil must come out of the “shadow of the colossus, falling long and dark over the hemisphere.”  

But what’s left unsaid is the evolving concern LAC countries feel about their engagement with China over the past decade. Mexico, Brazil, and Chile have imposed tariffs on some Chinese exports to protect their domestic industries from China’s overcapacity. There has been a string of failed promises around Chinese infrastructure projects that have been delayed, caused environmental damage, involved corruption, or been criticized for potentially being dual use. And there has been a rise in Chinese-linked criminal networks sweeping across the region, too. All of this adds real complexity in the China-LAC relationship beyond just U.S. pressure; their absence is glaring in these three pieces. 

Finally, regarding implications for Chinese foreign policy, both Fang Xiao and Yang Shouguo acknowledge that China is facing real headwinds with the rise of the more pro-U.S. New Right, although they do explain that some New Right leaders, such as Javier Milei in Argentina, do still pragmatically cooperate with China. Wang Huan suggests that if the New Right leaders are unable to carry out real, tangible results in the short term, the political pendulum may swing back to the left in the next election cycle. China’s goal then, Fang Xiao avers, is to make itself “irreplaceable” to the LAC region by continuing to advance its “Five Programs” of solidarity, development, civilization, peace, and people-to-people ties.

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Recent Chinese scholarship suggests that U.S. pressure has become one of the leading rationales for understanding how Latin American countries are responding to U.S.-China strategic competition. This rationale assumes that the ability or inability to withstand pressure will decide whether a country will adopt a balanced diplomacy or if it will bandwagon with the United States and distance itself from China.  

The only contemporary case study provided to explain this dynamic is the one of Panama’s foreign policy after U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s visit to the country in early 2025. While the case study adequately points out that Panama cannot withstand U.S. pressure on certain areas and that cooperation with China can be easily replaced, it misrepresents Panama’s actions as a shift from “balanced diplomacy” to “bandwagoning” with the United States. In doing so, it fails to acknowledge that Panama in its relationship with great powers (1) has historically tended to overbalance U.S. threat perceptions as part of a calculated bargain and (2) that throughout the first five years of its diplomatic ties with China (2017–2022), it leaned towards underbalancing threat perceptions.  

Panama Is Not Bandwagoning with the United States 

Panama’s relationship with the United States is a rather unique one. Forged through almost a century of diplomatic negotiations on the status of the Panama Canal, this relationship is largely governed by the 1977 Panama Canal treaties, which also have a multilateral component. In compliance with the treaties, the United States handed over the interoceanic waterway to Panama on December 31, 1999. Since then, Panama—in an attempt to sustain the status quo—has tended to overbalance on most U.S. security concerns, including terrorism (by joining the 2003 Coalition of the Willing and the 2015 Counter-ISIS Coalition), drugs, and migration, as part of a calculated bargain in order to avoid a clear-cut alignment—bandwagoning—or suffer coercive compliance.  

Panama Was Underbalancing China from 2017–2022  

After the establishment of diplomatic ties between Panama and China on June 13, 2017, Panama underbalanced threat perceptions from China. This coincided with the United States’ relative retreat in the isthmus, leaving the ambassadorship vacant for more than four years (March 2018–November 2022). This meant that for much of the first five years of China’s diplomatic presence in the isthmus, the United States had no diplomatic representation at the highest level. This coincided with a significant increase in China’s influence in Panama, including in ports, infrastructure, mining, energy, telecommunications and surveillance.  

A concrete case of underbalancing by Panama was the 2021 renewal of the concession for the Balboa and Cristobal port terminals to a local subsidiary of Hong Kong–based CK Hutchison Holdings—the same concession that the Supreme Court of Panama would declare unconstitutional in 2026. By ignoring concrete and sustained geopolitical warnings, including the illiberalization of Hong Kong and the intensification of U.S.-China strategic competition and prioritizing commercial inertia, Panama overlooked structural risks and incurred in a failure of strategic foresight.  

A U-Turn or Course Correction? 

Although claims of purported Chinese control over the Panama Canal were unsubstantiated, China’s footprint in Panama was significant. When faced with pressure from the United States, Panama reverted to overbalancing vis-à-vis the United States—acting not only on the ports, but also on infrastructure and telecommunications—and ceased underbalancing China. It could be argued that there was coercive compliance, but that is not the same as bandwagoning. Thus, the assertion that “Panama yielded to U.S. pressure and shifted from balanced diplomacy to bandwagoning with the United States” is not an adequate one. Panama’s trajectory instead reflects an asymmetrical triage: overbalancing its historic hegemon on security, underbalancing a rising power during a diplomatic vacuum, and absorbing massive friction while correcting course under duress.

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A review of the shared literature and the workshop debate reveals some analytical blind spots and shared assumptions regarding Latin America’s positioning amid the U.S.-China competition. Traditional international relations analysis remains anchored in a framework that simply does not work to explain U.S.–Latin America relations: the left-right axis. According to this conventional view, political shifts in the region—from the left-wing governments of the last 20 years, whether moderate or radical, to the emergence of new right-wing administrations—are expected to dictate dramatic foreign policy reorientations toward Washington. Specifically, mainstream commentary assumes that left-leaning governments naturally confront U.S. hegemony in favor of regional autonomy, while right-wing leaders, driven by pro-Western identities and strong ideological affinity, will seamlessly subordinate their foreign policies to U.S. security directives and join Washington’s containment strategy against Beijing. 

However, this traditional paradigm fails to explain the actual dynamics of U.S.–Latin America relations for three fundamental reasons. 

1. Structural Economic and Financial Dependence: The depth of structural economic and financial integration with China utterly transcends ideological shifts in executive office. Even when radical right-wing governments come to power promising a strict pro-Washington alignment, the material reality remains unchanged: China has established itself as the primary trading partner, a massive buyer of agricultural commodities and raw materials, and a critical source of financial lifelines—such as currency swap lines—for major South American economies. When hard economic stability is at stake, ideological rhetoric crashes against structural necessity. Washington demands that partner capitals choose sides and decouple from Beijing, but local leaders quickly discover that complying with U.S. pressures triggers immediate financial distress. Consequently, structural economic dependence overrides ideological posturing, rendering the left-right framework useless for explaining why even pro-U.S. administrations maintain deep commercial ties with China. 

2. Elite Capture: The phenomenon of elite capture across Latin American political, business, and institutional spheres is far more influential and pervasive in shaping foreign policy than the superficial left-right political spectrum. Across the region, cross-ideological networks of political and economic elites develop deep-seated stakes in bilateral trade, infrastructure projects, technological integration, and financial agreements with Chinese state-linked entities. This elite capture operates independently of who sits in the presidential palace—whether a populist leftist or a radical conservative. Mainstream analysts fail to put the proper magnifying glass on these entrenched webs of interest, focusing on noisy presidential rhetoric and ideological labels rather than the structural dynamics of elite capture that routinely bypass Washington’s strategic preferences. 

3. Public Skepticism Toward U.S. Intervention: Popular opinion dynamics in Latin America reveal a deep-seated historical and structural rejection of U.S. hegemony and interventionism (look at José Enrique Rodó’s book Ariel, published in Uruguay in the beginning of the twentieth century). Across broad sectors of public opinion, historical memory and contemporary perceptions of U.S. pressure—ranging from economic coercion and tariff threats to aggressive security demands and the resurgence of the Monroe Doctrine—generate far greater societal resistance than anything China does. While the United States attempts to frame its relations with Latin America through the lens of great power competition, ordinary citizens and local civil societies frequently view heavy-handed U.S. directives as an infringement on national sovereignty. Because negative public sentiment toward U.S. overreach is substantially deeper and more widespread than anxieties regarding Chinese influence, attempts by allied governments to enforce rigid, uncritical alignment with Washington often provoke severe domestic friction that traditional political models fail to anticipate. 

Conclusion

Ultimately, reducing U.S.–Latin America relations to a trilateral tug-of-war governed by domestic party ideology ignores the complex realities on the ground. To understand why Washington struggles to secure predictable alignment in its own hemisphere, analysts must look beyond the left-right binary—which simply does not work to explain U.S.–Latin America relations—and focus instead on structural economic dependency, deep-seated elite capture, and the enduring weight of public skepticism toward U.S. hegemony.

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