At the time when China’s growing footprint in Latin America and the Caribbean has given rise to heightened geopolitical scrutiny of Beijing activities in the region, President Xi Jinping’s inauguration last week of the Chancay Port in Peru, built under BRI scheme, has added to the concern of strategists in the West as it has taken place when the US and its allies are busy in developing measures against Beijing’s aggressive move in the Indo-Pacific region.
Lying in the backyard of the US, Peru’s Chancay Port has been constructed by Cosco Shipping Ports of China at the cost of $3.6 billion. The East Asian nation owns more than 100 ports in around 63 countries, including Sri Lanka’s Hambantota Port, given on 99-year lease to China Merchants Ports Holdings Company Limited in 2017 after Colombo failed to repay a $1.12 billion loan obtained to construct the deep-sea port.
However, since then, Sri Lanka’s Hambantota Port has become a classic example of Beijing crafted military exploitation as it is very often used by China to dock its spy ships and other military-grade vessels to the consternation of peace-loving neighbours of the island nation.
There is fear among American defence experts that the Chancay Port, a massive deep-sea port, which can handle ultra-large container vessels of up to 18,000 TEUs (Twenty Foot Equivalent Units), can easily accommodate Chinese warships, the way Sri Lanka’s Hambantota Port is made to facilitate docking of PLA Navy’s ships.
Moreover, what exacerbates American defence and strategic experts’ apprehension is that Peru is just around 5580.07 km away from the US and as such, construction of the Chancay Port in the Latin American nation falls under the US’s “red zone.”
Former head of the US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), Gen Laura Richardson in an interview with Newsweek earlier this year said, “They (the Chancay Port) are on the 20-yard line, in the red zone to our homeland.” She also accused China of playing a “long game with the development of the dual-use port.”
But China steadfastly projects the Chancay Port as one which will “accelerate the integration process of the Latin American economy.” The East Asian country’s state-backed Global Times said, “As a landmark project of the Belt and Road Initiative in the Latin American region, the Chancay Port offers a new solution for regional cooperation, which will effectively promote in-depth collaboration between China and Latin American countries.”
Besides serving Peruvian interests, the Chancay Port, a 15-berth deep-water port, is expected to help Ecuador, Chile, Colombia, and Brazil grow their trade with China. In 2023, As per South China Morning Post, these five countries exported around $135 billion worth of goods to China.
Despite this, experts feel that even if Beijing’s apparent move behind developing the mega deep seaport in Peru is to facilitate smooth trade between Latin America and China, it cannot be ruled out being used as a strategic facility by the East Asian nation. This fear gets further accentuated by the fact that China’s Cosco Shipping Ports has a 60% stake in the port, while Peruvian company Volcan holds the rest.
Given this, what concerns security experts the most is that all the back-end infrastructure of the port in Chancay will be under the control of a foreign power like China. In particular, it is feared that Chinese operators can gather intelligence on the types of ships and cargoes passing through the port. Besides, operators can even seize a particular cargo or prevent docked ships from leaving, disrupting supply chains and international trade.
Then ports developed by the Chinese companies have been found to be designed for dual civilian and military use like Sri Lanka’s Hambantota Port and Bahamas’s Abaco Port. According to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a US-based think tank, Chinese state enterprises have 40 port building or upgrading projects in Latin America and the Caribbean region.
Almost all of them are handled by Chinese companies. Some of these projects are geographically close to the US; such as the Chinese port facility on the island of Abaco in the Bahamas. Abaco is a dual use port which is close to Southern Florida, the location of the US Defence Department’s SOUTHCOM headquarters in Miami. Other Chinese projects such as Argentina’s polar logistics facility on Beagle Channel is close to the Strait of Magellan, a 570 km sea route which separates South America from North America.
Such China-led developments in the Western Hemisphere, including the Chancay Port in Peru have led to generating a sense of unease among American security experts. The growing list of China’s ports and other infrastructure projects in the Western Hemisphere “could disrupt US commercial and naval operations in the region,” Ryan C Berg, the Director of the Americas Programme at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, said.
Yet, China is not only involved in port constructions and other infrastructure development in Latin American-Caribbean countries. Its investments, especially in areas such as mining, telecommunications, lithium, energy, and space have grown over the time, thereby attaining a significant degree of leverage over the region.
“The expanding leverage of the PRC (People’s Republic of China) in Latin America and the Caribbean has ramifications that stretch far beyond the region, posing a global risk. More specifically, the ability of the United States and its allies to compete in the Indo-Pacific and uphold the rules-based international order could be undercut by asymmetric disadvantages developing in the Western Hemisphere,” Lieutenant General Evan L Pettus who currently serves as the Deputy Commander of the US Southern Command said in his write up in the Journal of Indo-Pacific Affairs.
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