The United States has long regarded Latin America as its sphere of influence and has maintained close scrutiny of the development of relations with Latin America by countries outside the region, becoming particularly vigilant since the beginning of the 21st century, as China–Latin America ties have drawn closer. In recent years, as China–Latin America cooperation has become more institutionalized and taken on greater strategic significance, perceptions within U.S. academic and strategic research circles regarding China–Latin America relations and China’s role in Latin America have gradually evolved. Government decision-makers have begun to adjust and lay out policies within the framework of strategic competition with China, and the China factor has increasingly become an important consideration in the formulation of U.S. policy toward Latin America. This article seeks to review U.S. elite perceptions of China–Latin America relations and analyze their diverse impacts on relevant decision-making and on bilateral and multilateral relationships in practice, with a view to contributing to the sound development of China–U.S.–Latin America trilateral relations.

I. Perceptions of China–Latin America Relations in U.S. Academic and Strategic Circles

In recent years, as an important component of the major debate, reassessment, and adjustment of U.S. strategy toward China, a parallel round of discussion on China–Latin America relations has unfolded within the United States. This discussion began roughly around 2017 and presents several distinctive characteristics.

First, participation has been broad, encompassing representative figures from political, governmental, military, and academic circles. Leading this discussion have been senior lawmakers from both the Democratic and Republican parties, including figures such as Bob Menendez, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Mario Díaz-Balart. Many of them are Latino politicians from Florida who are well-versed in Latin American affairs. Leveraging their influence and mobilizing capacity, they have frequently pushed Congress to convene hearings, inviting political, business, and military figures from official and semi-official bodies—including the National Security Council, the Department of State, the Department of the Treasury, the Department of Commerce, U.S. Southern Command, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC)—to testify, and have made concerted efforts to shape the tone and direction of the discussion as a whole. The strategic and academic communities have also participated. Scholars from think tanks such as the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the Brookings Institution, the Atlantic Council, and the Inter-American Dialogue (IAD), as well as from universities with strong traditions in Latin American studies such as the University of Miami and Florida International University, have been invited to testify at hearings. They have also frequently organized seminars, released research reports, given interviews to mainstream media outlets, and tracked new developments in China–Latin America relations.

Second, the discussion has been highly goal-oriented, aimed at shaping perceptions of China and influencing decision-making. Unlike earlier scholarly research that examined the history and current state of China–Latin America relations from an academic perspective, these semi-official policy discussions have, from beginning to end, pointed toward a single objective: providing academic justification for U.S. government decision-making on Latin America, while simultaneously using the pretext of a policy debate to promote negative China-related narratives—such as the “China threat theory,” the claim that “China–Latin America cooperation is harmful,” and allegations of “geopolitical ambition”—both within the United States and internationally. This is done to influence U.S. policy toward Latin America and even Latin American countries’ perceptions of China. These discussions have extensively employed techniques such as risk overinflation [泛化风险], threat amplification, and expectation-driven alarmism, deviating from the domain of academic and policy research and taking on the characteristics of “cognitive warfare.”

Third, the range of topics is broad, with the core questions being “how to view” and “how to respond.” The discussion has been dominated by research at the strategic level, seeking to arrive at strategic judgments regarding China–Latin America relations and China’s role in Latin America, while also including no small number of micro-level case studies focusing on specific countries, sectors, and projects. Overall, the relevant issues can be broadly grouped into several categories, including: assessing China’s motivations in developing relations with Latin American countries; evaluating the impact of practical China–Latin America cooperation—especially cooperation in emerging and sensitive fields—on U.S. national interests; anticipating the direction and medium- to long-term trends of China–Latin America relations; reflecting on deficiencies in U.S. policy toward Latin America; and considering how the United States should respond to and counter China–Latin America cooperation.

This round of discussion has continued to the present and has yet to conclude. Although it has been marked by differences of opinion and controversy, several basic points of consensus have nonetheless emerged. First, there is a belief that China’s advance in Latin America carries geostrategic intentions. On October 17, 2018, the U.S. Congress–mandated U.S.–China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) released a 65-page assessment report entitled China’s Engagement with Latin America and the Caribbean. The report judged that China’s cooperation with Latin America pursues four main objectives: securing access to natural resources and consumer markets; seeking support for China’s diplomacy; shaping positive perceptions of China; and pursuing geostrategic influence in the United States’ immediate neighborhood.¹ In February 2024, the Atlantic Council invited a number of experts, scholars, and former government officials to participate in research and released a series of reports on how to respond to China–Latin America relations. The core argument of these reports is that, although the main theater of China–U.S. global strategic competition lies in the “Indo-Pacific” region, China is seeking to cultivate Latin America as a new lever with which to constrain the United States. Therefore, Washington urgently needs to accord this issue a high level of strategic attention.²

Second, there is the belief that China–Latin America relations threaten U.S. economic interests and homeland security in the Western Hemisphere. Proponents of this view argue that although the United States remains Latin America’s largest trading partner and source of investment, its share of Latin America’s total foreign trade and foreign direct investment has declined markedly. In particular, in countries such as Brazil, Peru, and Chile, China has replaced the United States as the largest trading partner. They further argue that China’s extensive investment in Latin America and its imports of key raw materials—including critical minerals, agricultural commodities, and inputs for green energy—have encroached upon economic interests that previously belonged to the United States, thereby “cutting into America’s cheese.” For example, Margaret Myers, director of the Asia & Latin America Program at the IAD, argues that China is influencing Latin America through means such as high-level exchanges, commercial cooperation, people-to-people and cultural exchanges, military training, and public diplomacy, and has successfully shaped Latin America’s perceptions of China and its China-related policy decisions. China’s steadily growing influence in Latin America has weakened U.S. international influence and the competitiveness of U.S. enterprises, raising the possibility that the United States could lose its strategic advantages and dominant position in the region, and thus generating deep anxiety and unease.³ This line of thinking further asserts that China’s investments in projects such as deep-space ground stations, resource satellites, 5G technology, ports, and similar facilities carry potential military uses, and have already undermined the United States’ security buffer in the Western Hemisphere. For example, Laura Richardson, then commander of U.S. Southern Command, stated that although China does not currently maintain military bases in Latin America, it in fact “controls” a number of key and science and technology (S&T) infrastructure assets in the region—including canals, ports, terminals, communications, and aviation facilities—which “could at any time in the future be used by the Chinese military as facilities for entering Latin America,” and that “the United States lacks the strength to compete with China and faces the risk of being overtaken by China.”⁴ Since Trump’s second term began, the notion that “China controls the Panama Canal” has been aggressively hyped, triggering a new round of claims within U.S. political and strategic circles that China–Latin America cooperation constitutes a “threat.” On February 11, 2025, at a hearing held by the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security, multiple scholars from the CSIS, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the Atlantic Council collectively promoted claims that China “controls” multiple logistics hubs and transportation corridors across the Western Hemisphere, falsely claiming that China could thereby “exert trade influence,” “collect logistics data,” and “restrict the mobility of the U.S. Navy in wartime.”⁵ Evan Ellis, a professor at the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College, even argued that, to prevail over China in Latin America, the United States must make enormous investments, and that failure to do so would result in “unbearably greater losses.”⁶

Third, there is the view that the United States’ Latin America strategy suffers from major deficiencies and vulnerabilities. Many subscribe to the so-called “Western Hemisphere neglect” thesis, criticizing the United States for having underestimated Latin America’s strategic value in recent years and for having committed grossly insufficient resources to the region. Laura Richardson has advanced what she terms the “rope theory,” namely that “when you urgently need to grab a rope, you do not necessarily need to know who threw it.” In her view, it is precisely the United States’ long-standing strategic absence and policy shortcomings that have “snubbed” and “neglected” Latin America, thereby allowing China to seize the opportunity and assume the role of the one “throwing the rope.”⁷ Some figures in the business community have pointed out that the United States’ past practice of “benign neglect” toward Latin America—viewing the region as a “problem” rather than an “opportunity”—enabled China to capitalize on a once-in-a-generation opportunity and achieve late-stage economic ascendancy.⁸ Margaret Myers, for her part, argues that the United States has failed to pursue mutually beneficial cooperation based on the needs of Latin American countries, instead repeatedly emphasizing China’s shortcomings and competing with China at every turn. China’s inclusive narrative and strategic orientation toward shared development, by contrast, are more attractive to Latin American countries, a dynamic that has directly resulted in a relative rise in China’s influence in the region and a corresponding decline in that of the United States.⁹ Others argue that in recent years, the U.S. government has sought to compel Latin American countries to shoulder responsibility for combating crime and managing borders by resorting to unilateral measures such as imposing additional tariffs, cutting aid, and applying visa sanctions. These actions have triggered resistance and resentment among countries in the region, further alienating Latin America from the United States.¹⁰ With regard to how relations with Latin American countries should be handled, some figures in the strategic community emphasize that Latin American countries are fully capable of judging for themselves the costs and benefits of developing relations with China and do not require instructions from the United States. If the United States wishes to consolidate and expand its interests in Latin America, rather than fixating on China’s perceived shortcomings, it would be better served by focusing on putting its own house in order—that is, by strengthening U.S.–Latin America relations. For example, a thematic discussion on competition with China held by the Brookings Institution in September 2024 concluded that the United States must not respond to China’s growing engagement in Latin America through Cold War–style thinking, as confrontation would only prove counterproductive. Instead, offering Latin America a “U.S. alternative” to China constitutes the most effective response.¹¹

Fourth, there is the view that the United States needs to limit further convergence between China and Latin America in sensitive fields. In May 2023, Ryan C. Berg, director of the Americas Program at CSIS, authored a research report titled Insulate, Curtail, Compete: Sketching a U.S. Grand Strategy in Latin America and the Caribbean. The report focuses on questions such as “to what extent the United States should allow China–Latin America relations to develop,” “how the United States should restrict China–Latin America cooperation,” and “in which areas the United States should invest resources to compete with China in Latin America,” and proposes curbing the development of China–Latin America relations through the combined application of the strategies of “insulate, curtail, and compete.”¹² A series of research reports by the Atlantic Council further detail a strategy of “competition plus containment,” recommending that the United States implement an anti-China strategy in Latin America built around the pillars of “prioritization, investment, information, and alliance-building.” This includes blocking military and security cooperation, restricting economic and financial cooperation, and countering so-called “information warfare” and “cognitive warfare.” These reports also call for urging Latin American countries to achieve rapid “hard decoupling” from China in highly sensitive areas such as critical infrastructure, critical minerals, and advanced S&T, while gradually reducing dependence on China in lower-sensitivity areas such as agriculture, non-critical infrastructure, and civilian S&T, thereby progressively realizing “soft decoupling.” In addition, some conservative Republican lawmakers and scholars at conservative think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation have openly called for reviving the “Monroe Doctrine” or introducing a “New Monroe Doctrine,” with the aim of reestablishing U.S. influence and dominance in key and sensitive sectors in the Western Hemisphere by marginalizing China.¹³

II. The Response of the U.S. Decision-Making Establishment to China–Latin America Relations

U.S. strategic and academic elites have arrived at a broadly shared assessment and positioning of China–Latin America relations and of China’s role in Latin America. As some of these individuals have participated in decision-making inside and outside government through various channels, the U.S. decision-making establishment has gradually absorbed their views and perspectives and has responded accordingly. Most prominently, under the impetus of Congress, the U.S. government has taken opposition to China as the starting point for formulating or adjusting its Latin America policy and has accelerated its strategic deployment in the region.

First, China is characterized as “the United States’ primary competitor in Latin America.” During the eight years of Trump’s first term and the Biden administration, the U.S. government further clarified China’s strategic positioning in Latin America. In December 2017, the Trump administration’s first National Security Strategy described China as “a competitor that seeks to draw Latin America into its strategic orbit through state-led investment and lending.”¹⁴ In August 2020, the White House National Security Council released a strategic document titled Overview of Western Hemisphere Strategic Framework, describing China as “an extraregional actor whose political and economic influence in the Western Hemisphere continues to grow,” and explicitly calling for countering “China’s economic intrusion and harmful political penetration.”¹⁵ In February 2021, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State, responding to questions from Latin American media, stated that “China is the United States’ largest strategic competitor in Latin America” and that “limiting China’s influence is the greatest challenge facing the United States in Latin America.”¹⁶ Since 2022, the Posture Statement submitted annually to Congress by U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) has consistently characterized China as the “Number One Pacing Threat,” with Russia, Iran, and transnational criminal organizations all ranked behind China.¹⁷

Official U.S. statements and authoritative reports have both bluntly and repeatedly portrayed China as a “major rival,” the “greatest challenge,” and a “direct threat” in Latin America. Legislators from both parties have likewise spoken with one voice in exaggerating China’s purported “negative impact” on Latin America and the “real challenges” it poses to U.S.–Latin America relations. Some members of Congress have closely fixated on China–Latin America relations and the practical cooperation between the two sides. Centering on issues such as “Emerging external influences facing the Western Hemisphere,” “Dollar diplomacy or debt trap? Examining China’s role in the Western Hemisphere,” “China in Latin America,” “Communism at our doorstep: The threat of China’s malign influence in Latin America,” and “China’s role in Latin America,” they have successively convened hearings, fanned claims of a “China–Latin America cooperation threat,” and jointly introduced a series of bills aimed at reinforcing U.S.–Latin America relations while constraining and suppressing China–Latin America cooperation. These include the Advancing Competitiveness, Transparency, and Security in the Americas Act (2020); the Western Hemisphere Security Strategy Act (2022 and 2023); the Defund China’s Allies Act (2023); the Inter-American Development Bank Transparency Act; the Western Hemisphere Nearshoring Act; the Western Hemisphere Partnership Act; and the Americas Trade and Investment Act (2024). Although most of these bills have remained at the proposal stage or even as draft legislation, with few becoming law, they nonetheless vividly reflect the high degree of consensus across U.S. political circles regarding perceptions of China–Latin America relations. In November 2023, on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the statement of the Monroe Doctrine, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed a resolution that was subsequently co-sponsored by 10 Republican senators, including then-senators J. D. Vance and Marco Rubio, Vice President and Secretary of State during Trump’s second term. The resolution called on the executive branch to continue to firmly uphold the Monroe Doctrine—described as “this enduring foreign policy principle”—and to “prevent adversaries such as China, Russia, and Iran from spreading malign influence in the Western Hemisphere.” Among these “extraregional powers,” China was ranked first and regarded as the principal adversary and top threat that the United States must confront with full force in Latin America.¹⁸

Second, the United States is increasing strategic attention to Latin America and tilting resources toward the region, while offering a “U.S. alternative” to replace China. U.S. academic circles generally hold that U.S. attention to and emphasis on Latin America began with the introduction of the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, reached a peak during the Cold War in the 20th century, and then declined with the end of the Cold War. After the September 11 attacks, U.S. policy toward Latin America was nearly one of neglect. U.S. scholars once pointedly remarked that “the United States has no Latin American policy, save one of benign neglect.”¹⁹ In fact, since the early 1990s, when the George H. W. Bush administration proposed the “Enterprise for the Americas Initiative” and the concept of a Free Trade Area of the Americas, successive U.S. administrations over roughly the past 30 years have scarcely formulated an overarching strategy or clearly defined policy toward Latin America. This state of “benign neglect” did not begin to change until Trump took office in 2017. Confronted with the rapid advancement of China–Latin America cooperation—especially the continuous progress of Belt and Road co-construction—the United States came to recognize the necessity and urgency of consolidating U.S.–Latin America relations and began reallocating resources to shore up its “backyard.” Beginning in 2017, in order to strengthen U.S.–Latin America relations, the United States started to deploy substantial resources in the areas of aid, technology, finance, trade, and diplomacy, and successively rolled out systematic and comprehensive Latin America strategies and policies. These efforts have placed particular emphasis on addressing external security threats such as illegal migration, drug trafficking, and arms smuggling, while also seeking to significantly weaken China’s presence and influence in Latin America—exhibiting clear purposefulness, directionality, and targeted intent.

The Growth in the Americas initiative was the core U.S. policy toward Latin America during Trump’s first term, and also the first policy initiative to mobilize whole-of-government resources to carry out systematic and comprehensive competition with China in Latin America. Numerous official and semi-official institutions were deeply involved, including the U.S. State Department, Treasury, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Energy, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the U.S. Trade and Development Agency (USTDA), and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC). Its core concept was to mobilize private-sector investment in Latin American energy, telecommunications, transportation, and logistics infrastructure, and to build “small circles” of cooperation through such means as high-level mutual visits, the signing of intergovernmental memoranda of cooperation, informal multilateral dialogues, and technical assistance, thereby constraining the space for China–Latin America practical cooperation, especially co-construction of the Belt and Road Initiative. This approach of “initiative versus initiative” and “investment versus investment” became the principal model through which the Trump administration conducted competition with China in Latin America during its first term. It attracted the participation of many Latin American countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Jamaica, and Panama, a considerable number of which were also co-constructors or participants in the Belt and Road Initiative.

After taking office, the Biden administration further increased investment in Latin America, seeking to pool additional resources and, by leveraging the United States’ position of advantage and leadership in key domains, enhance its competitiveness vis-à-vis China–Latin America cooperation. At the same time, it actively responded to Latin American countries’ concerns and sought to encourage the region to shift from “looking east” to “looking north.” White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan made this point explicit, stating that “U.S. investment should be more attractive and impactful than Chinese projects,” and that the best way to counter China’s interests in Latin America is to actively build a U.S. economic vision.²⁰ Based on this response logic, during the Ninth Summit of the Americas hosted by the Biden administration in June 2022, the United States launched the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity (APEP) initiative. The initiative targeted four major objectives: enhancing Latin America’s competitiveness, building economic recovery capacity, promoting shared prosperity, and advancing sustainable investment. As the key agenda for the next stage of U.S.–Latin America cooperation, it identifies priorities such as strengthening regional competitiveness and integration, promoting shared prosperity and good governance, building sustainable infrastructure, protecting the climate and the environment, and advancing the development of healthy communities. The United States put forward large-scale assistance and investment plans for participating Latin American countries. These include establishing a multi-billion-dollar multi-joint investment platform through the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation and the Inter-American Investment Corporation (IIC) under the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), in order to provide infrastructure financing to Latin American countries and help them modernize or upgrade ports, clean energy networks, and digital infrastructure; creating climate-finance funds within the IDB to help Latin American countries innovate debt-relief mechanisms such as “debt-for-nature swaps” and green bonds; and vigorously cultivating semiconductor industry talent in Latin America to serve future nearshoring and friendshoring of the semiconductor industry. Public opinion generally holds that, as a Western Hemisphere version of the “Indo-Pacific Economic Framework,” the APEP initiative—despite the Biden administration’s strenuous efforts at reframing and packaging—cannot conceal its core logic of geopolitical competition. Whether in the priority areas of investment, assistance, and debt relief, or in preferred partners, operating mechanisms, and standards and rules, the initiative consistently reflects the United States’ urgent motivation to reassert its influence and presence, particularly in competition with China.

In addition to the Growth in the Americas initiative and the APEP, global initiatives jointly launched by the United States and its allies—such as the Clean Network, Build Back Better World, and the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment—have all prioritized Latin American countries. These initiatives mobilize public and private sectors, as well as regional multilateral institutions under U.S. and allied influence, to direct investment, financing, technical assistance, and support funds preferentially toward Latin America. The aim is to incorporate the region into development pathways defined by the United States and its allies, and to reduce Latin American countries’ dependence on Chinese capital, technology, and assistance.

At the outset of Trump’s second term, the administration displayed an unprecedented level of attention to Latin America, particularly to neighboring Central America and the Caribbean. Secretary of State Rubio chose Latin America as the destination of his first overseas trip after taking office, the first time this has happened in more than a century of U.S. diplomatic history. Rubio made no effort to conceal his strategic intent to compete with China in Latin America. Prior to the trip, he wrote in a commentary titled An Americas First Foreign Policy that previous U.S. administrations had consistently prioritized other regions while neglecting the Western Hemisphere. This not only sidelined regional allies but also allowed China to “take advantage of the vacuum.” Rubio declared that the Trump administration’s pledge to “Make America Great Again” also meant making the entire Americas great. Going forward, the United States would pursue an “Americas First” policy, commit itself to strengthening trade ties and partnerships, and lead the entire Western Hemisphere into a “golden age” of security, strength, and prosperity.²¹

Third, the United States is interfering with and undermining China–Latin America practical cooperation, and reducing the existing “stock” of China–Latin America relations. While the United States has been making every effort to “add” to U.S.–Latin America relations, it has simultaneously spared no effort to “subtract” from China–Latin America cooperation. This includes inciting negative publicity related to China, forcefully promoting supply chain and production chain decoupling, and constricting the space for China–Latin America cooperation. The aim is to erect obstacles to China–Latin America practical cooperation across multiple dimensions—cognitive, economic, and regulatory—thereby gradually hollowing out the political, economic, and people-to-people and cultural foundations of China–Latin America relations.

First, this involves manipulating Latin American countries through “cognitive warfare,” exerting ideological influence and reinforcing value alignment. In recent years, U.S. public messaging toward Latin America has displayed an increasingly pronounced anti-China tone. It has vigorously highlighted and magnified differences between China and Latin America in areas such as ideology, development models, human rights concepts, and environmental views, in an attempt to weaken Latin American countries’ identification with and trust in China, and to induce them to distance themselves—or even disengage—from China. The United States has wantonly stoked negative China-related public opinion in Latin America. Examples include the so-called “China threat theory,” “new imperialism,” and “new colonialism” narratives promoted during Trump’s first term, as well as the Biden administration’s allegations of “resource plundering,” “cyber theft,” “economic coercion,” “illegal fishing,” and “debt traps.” All these narratives serve to smear practical China–Latin America cooperation.

Second, this involves coercing Latin American countries to economically decouple from China. In coordination with its trade and tariff wars against China, the United States has made vigorous efforts to draw Latin American countries—especially nearby Mexico and the Central American states—into its own economic “small circle,” encouraging U.S. and European firms to relocate production chains and supply chains from China to Latin America. In doing so, it seeks to build peripheral value chains and industrial clusters encompassing the countries of the Americas, thereby serving its strategy of economic “decoupling” from China while weakening China’s presence and position within value chains in the Americas. Whether through the “Return to the Americas” initiative launched during Trump’s first term or through the “friendshoring” and “nearshoring” policies strongly promoted by the Biden administration, substantial resources have been invested to entice Latin American countries to absorb industries relocating from the Asia-Pacific region—particularly from China. Sectors such as semiconductors, healthcare, mineral processing, and renewable energy have even been offered as inducements, mobilizing relevant countries to sever industrial links with China. At the same time, in order to prevent what it terms the “transshipment” of Chinese goods to the United States via Mexico, the United States has used the review of the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA) as leverage to pressure Mexico to draw a clear line between itself and Chinese automakers—especially new energy vehicle firms—so as to prevent Chinese companies and capital from using Mexico as a “springboard” to circumvent U.S. trade tariffs.

Third, the United States constrains the space for China–Latin America cooperation through rules and standards. “Regulation” has been a commonly used anti-China tactic in Latin America under both Trump’s first administration and the Biden administration. Under the pretext of “helping Latin American countries improve governance capacity and regulatory standards,” the United States has used various forms of professional training, personnel exchanges, and assistance programs to intervene in Latin American countries’ systems of governance and legal environments, promoting U.S.-style standards in areas such as environmental protection, financing, labor, regulation, and law. While claiming to “maximize the benefits Latin American countries derive from China–Latin America cooperation,” the substance of this approach is to tailor rules specifically for China–Latin America practical cooperation, construct standardized norms and systems that exclude China, raise entry thresholds and coordination costs for China–Latin America cooperation, weaken the competitiveness of Chinese enterprises, and ultimately crowd them out of Latin American markets. The most typical example of this practice can be found in the field of digital infrastructure development. In recent years, the United States has vigorously peddled U.S. and European digital technology standards and architectures—particularly security standards—to Latin American countries.²² Under U.S. influence, Costa Rica excluded China from its 5G bidding process on the grounds that China has not signed the Budapest Convention.

III. The Impact of U.S. Elite Perceptions and Responses

U.S. elites’ perceptions of China–Latin America relations and their corresponding policy responses have produced direct shocks to China–Latin America cooperation in the short term, and over the longer term will influence U.S.–Latin America relations and China–U.S. relations in complex ways.

First, the strategic focus of U.S. policy toward Latin America is accelerating its shift toward competition with China. Following this round of policy debate, U.S. perceptions, and positioning of China–Latin America relations have essentially become clear. Interaction with China in Latin America is no longer framed in terms of whether there should be “more cooperation or more competition,” but rather centers on how to effectively contain China–Latin America relations, which are perceived as overtaking U.S.–Latin America relations, in order to maintain U.S. dominance and influence in the region. During Trump’s first term, the United States openly interfered with and undermined practical China–Latin America cooperation, even going so far as to play the “Taiwan card” to challenge the One-China principle, thereby causing serious damage to China–Latin America relations. The Biden administration, by contrast, has pursued all-around competition with China through highly deceptive and misleading flexible means, seeking to suppress China–Latin America cooperation by substituting “soft rules” for “hard coercion.” Whether emphasizing containment or competition, the overall direction of U.S. Latin America strategy—marked by exclusion of and opposition to China—has already been set. While differences may emerge in operational logic, policy instruments, and narrative framing at the level of implementation, major changes are unlikely in the short term.

Second, Latin America’s position in U.S. foreign strategy has risen markedly. For a long time, the United States has regarded Latin America as its “backyard,” yet the region has not occupied a prominent place in the overall map of U.S. diplomacy. Latin America’s dependence on the United States in areas such as the economy, finance, trade, security, and remittances has been largely one-sided. The United States’ core concern regarding Latin America has been preventing security risks—such as illegal migration, drug trafficking, and arms smuggling—from spilling over into the United States. It was for this reason that Trump defined the traditional, economically dependent U.S.–Latin America relationship as one in which “Latin America needs the United States, while the United States does not need Latin America.”²³ Under the new circumstances, the United States has increasingly come to value the strategic importance of Mexico and Central America as natural “security buffers,” the Caribbean as a region that controls key “maritime trade lifelines,” and South American countries as economically valuable “key production areas” for energy, minerals, and food. U.S. National Security Advisor Michael Waltz has made clear that Trump attaches great importance to the Western Hemisphere and views it as a critical link in global energy and resource production chains and supply chains.²⁴ These developments indicate that, driven by the strategy of competition with China, the United States’ positioning of Latin America may undergo a major shift—from a “backyard” to a “rear area.” As a result, Latin America’s weight and status within U.S. foreign strategy are likely to see a substantive rise.

Third, China’s development of relations with Latin America faces greater resistance and uncertainty, and the U.S. factor will become the most critical third-party force disrupting China–Latin America cooperation. U.S. perceptions of China–Latin America relations stem from anxiety over being “overtaken” and unease about being “threatened,” and these sentiments have been intensified by strategic competition with China. After a full political cycle since 2017 in which the Republican and Democratic parties alternated in power, this perception has increasingly taken shape and has gradually risen to become one of the important shared elements in the U.S. decision-making establishment’s perception of China. Viewed over a longer time horizon and within a broader spatial context, the United States is still able to maintain its leadership position and influence in Latin America, but its absolute advantage over China continues to shrink. This will further amplify negative U.S. perceptions of China–Latin America relations and prompt the United States to focus more on the competitive dimension of its interactions with China in Latin America, while overlooking the cooperative dimension. In February 2025, under pressure and coercion from the Trump administration, Panama proposed terminating the memorandum of understanding on co-construction of the Belt and Road Initiative with China, highlighting the severe external challenges and obstacles facing the development of China–Latin America relations. Public opinion generally holds that future U.S. suppression of China–Latin America cooperation will become more targeted and more intense. Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean—regions geographically close to the United States—will become the primary focus of U.S. prevention efforts, while fintech, military security, advanced manufacturing, and logistics corridors will become key areas of U.S. disruption. This will pose significant obstacles to the transformation and upgrading of China–Latin America relations in the new period. At the same time, as U.S. competition with China intensifies, Latin American countries are facing tremendous pressure stemming from bloc confrontation and the need to choose sides. An increasing number of countries may therefore tend toward maintaining an “equidistant diplomacy” between China and the United States, in order to avoid being drawn into the orbit of great-power rivalry. This, in turn, increases the uncertainty surrounding interactions between China and Latin American countries.

Fourth, Latin America may become one of the important directions of U.S. strategic competition with China. Between 2006 and 2015, China and the United States held seven rounds of consultations on Latin American affairs, which effectively shaped mutual understanding and trust regarding each side’s Latin America policies and formed the valuable consensus that “China–Latin America relations and U.S.–Latin America relations are not mutually exclusive.” In recent years, China has consistently emphasized that the substance of China–Latin America cooperation is mutual development, its orientation is openness and inclusiveness, and its essence is South–South cooperation. China has no geopolitical considerations, does not seek to build spheres of influence, does not participate in so-called strategic games, and neither targets third parties nor is influenced by third parties.²⁵ By contrast, the United States has conducted so-called policy discussions “behind closed doors,” hyping the alleged “potential risks” that China–Latin America cooperation poses to U.S. economic advantages and homeland security, and on this basis accusing China of harboring geopolitical intentions in developing relations with Latin America, and even speculating that China seeks to push the front line of its struggle with the United States into the U.S. “backyard.” The United States’ erroneous perceptions of China–Latin America relations will undoubtedly be projected onto its overall perceptions of China, and will give rise to deeper misreadings and more negative policy tendencies on the U.S. side. Recently, the United States has planned to levy port call fees on Chinese-built vessels. The U.S. Special Envoy for Latin America at the State Department, Mauricio Claver-Carone, threatened that “in the future, any products that pass through ports in Latin America controlled by China will be treated as products originating from China and will be subject to additional tariffs.”²⁶ It is evident that Latin America is being incorporated by the United States into its overall calculus of global competition with China in industry, trade, and logistics. Many Latin American countries are concerned that the United States’ stepped-up pressure on China–Latin America cooperation will turn Latin America into one of the “battlefields” of U.S. global competition with China, thereby harming the interests of Latin American countries themselves.²⁷

Conclusion

Against the broader backdrop of intensifying China–U.S. rivalry extending into more domains and involving an increasing number of third-party factors, the interconnectedness of China–U.S.–Latin America trilateral relations has grown markedly, and their prospects have become more uncertain. The prospects for the development of China–Latin America and U.S.–Latin America relations depend not only on the respective intentions and actions of the three parties but are also influenced by the U.S. strategy of excluding and constraining China. How the two major powers, China and the United States, can coexist appropriately in Latin America in the future has already become a pressing question of the times that the strategic, policy, and academic communities in both countries must urgently address.

On the one hand, the U.S. strategic and academic community should genuinely abandon the “backyard guarding” mindset and reexamine China–Latin America relations. The views and recommendations of the strategic community constitute important references and bases for national decision-making. It should be recognized that China–Latin America cooperation has clear positive effects in promoting Latin American development, creating employment, improving livelihoods, and reducing poverty. It also helps Latin American countries—especially those in Central America—reduce outward migration and eradicate the social breeding grounds of crime, thereby fundamentally preventing the spillover of threats such as illegal migration and organized crime into the United States. In other words, pragmatic China–Latin America cooperation not only benefits both sides, but also objectively contributes to U.S. border stability and domestic security, constituting a genuine “three-way win.” If the United States can break free from the entrenched mindset of the Monroe Doctrine, abandon the notion of “the Americas for the United States,” and adjust the perspective and dimensions in which it views China–Latin America cooperation, this will certainly be conducive to forming a more positive and constructive understanding of China–Latin America relations.

On the other hand, China and the United States need to manage their competition in Latin America and explore pathways and models for launching or deepening third-party cooperation, so as to achieve the parallel and positive development of U.S.–Latin America relations and China–Latin America relations. In fact, the areas of cooperation between China and the United States in Latin America far exceed those of competition. Rather than falling into the misconception of seeking to “outcompete” China in the region and expending vast resources and effort to “bludgeon to death” China–Latin America cooperation, the United States would do better to leverage its comparative advantages in finance, S&T, and security, and explore advancing China–U.S.–Latin America trilateral cooperation at points of converging interests such as poverty reduction, climate change response, and food security. This would better serve U.S. economic, security, and strategic interests. In recent years, many Chinese scholars have put forward the concept of a “China–U.S.–Latin America triangle,” proposing that the three parties align with prevailing development trends and work to build a China–U.S.–Latin America trilateral relationship characterized by balance, stability, coordination, and cooperation, thereby effectively compensating for the limitations of bilateral frameworks. As the world’s foremost global power, the United States should give due consideration to moving in the same direction, offering more well-grounded insights aimed at promoting the management of China–U.S. differences, benign competition, and positive interaction in Latin America. In this way, the United States would both demonstrate its global awareness and fulfill its global responsibilities.