Reference News Network, December 25 report: On December 21, the Spanish website China Policy Watch published an article titled "Difficult Choice: Where Is Latin America Headed Between China and the United States" by Spanish China expert Julio Rios. The article is excerpted as follows:

China recently released its third policy document on Latin America and the Caribbean, which undoubtedly reflects the growing importance of China-Latin America relations. In just a few decades, China has moved from a marginal position in the region to become a strategic partner of Latin America. In addition to the increasingly close bilateral ties, it has also become more common for Latin American countries to provide diplomatic support to China in multilateral forums. China views the Latin American and Caribbean region as a complete strategic space, rather than just an economic partner. With this comprehensive concept, China builds a narrative around harmony and cooperation. Although it closely monitors U.S. moves, it avoids explicitly mentioning geopolitical competition with the U.S.

Deepening China-Latin America Trade and Economic Cooperation

To understand the scale of this change, one needs only to look back at the Sino-Latin American bilateral trade volume of about $12 billion in 2000, which had surpassed $480 billion by 2023. China has become the second-largest trading partner of Latin America, and the largest trading partner for Brazil, Chile, Peru, Uruguay, and many other countries, with its market share in Argentina also approaching the first place. In recent years, as Chinese enterprises have expanded their presence in emerging and high-end fields, the impact of trade flows has continued to increase, and the structure of Sino-Latin American trade is gradually changing.

In terms of investment, between 2005 and 2024, China's investment in Latin America exceeded $160 billion, with significant presence in energy, mining, infrastructure, and telecommunications sectors.

Another important indicator is that many Latin American countries have joined the Belt and Road Initiative. More than 20 Latin American and Caribbean countries have signed related memoranda of understanding. Through this strategic framework, along with mechanisms such as the China-Latin America Forum, the core platform for regional cooperation between China and Latin America is continuously being consolidated.

The regional policy documents issued in 2008 and 2016 show that although China's strategy toward Latin America has undergone significant changes, it maintains remarkable consistency in core strategic directions.

Both documents positioned Latin America as a priority partner for China's enterprise internationalization.

China includes Latin America in the strategic category of developing countries, viewing it as a natural ally in building a more balanced, non-Western-centric international order. From China's perspective, Latin America is a companion in the reform of the international order, belonging to a broad political ideological camp, and there are structural points of compatibility between the two sides.

China does not pursue geopolitical goals or interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, offering an alternative to Western interventionism. Thus, China presents itself as a pragmatic, "non-politicized" partner, avoiding any political conditions attached.

The implementation of China's policy toward Latin America is not influenced by the ideological orientation of the relevant country's government. China does not require the relevant countries to automatically align with it, but instead seeks to maintain political stability to safeguard its own economic interests.

China and Latin America Have Become a Community with a Shared Future

The document released in 2025 is no longer a simple cooperation plan, but a comprehensive strategic framework that incorporates Latin America into China's global civilization construction blueprint. It is the most ambitious and detailed of the three documents, marking the transition of China-Latin America cooperation from the economic and infrastructure cooperation phase from 2008 to 2016 to a broader alliance stage led by China within the Global South. By taking the Community of Latin American and Caribbean Nations as a counterpart for regional cooperation, China elevates China-Latin America relations to the level of a "community with a shared future."

The concept of "community with a shared future" appeared in the 2016 document, but now it has been formally established as a strategic guiding direction. China-Latin America relations are no longer a "comprehensive partnership," but have become a grand political project integrated into China's global vision. Latin America has been incorporated into the narrative of China's modernization process and the vision of China promoting a multipolar world order.

Another turning point is that the document fully integrates four global initiatives. Unlike the 2008 and 2016 documents, the 2025 document explicitly includes the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative, the Global Civilization Initiative, and the Global Governance Initiative. As a result, Latin America is placed under China's comprehensive concept of global governance, achieving a qualitative leap compared to previous cooperation frameworks.

At the same time, the document proposes a cooperation agenda covering five areas: solidarity, development, civilization, peace, and people's livelihood. This is a new framework, and specific, operational, and assessable sub-projects have been designed for each area, reflecting the high institutionalization of China's concepts and methods.

The areas of cooperation between China and Latin America have significantly expanded, adding multiple new fields: artificial intelligence, integrated circuits, new materials, hydrogen energy, nuclear energy, clean energy, smart cities, digital infrastructure, cybersecurity, blue economy, Antarctic scientific cooperation, agricultural cooperation, biomedicine, BeiDou navigation, manned spaceflight, and lunar exploration. China-Latin America cooperation has thus shifted from resource and infrastructure fields to strategically significant industrial technology cooperation. In the financial field, new tools such as settlement in local currencies and more active promotion of the use of the Renminbi have emerged.

Non-traditional security cooperation has also been expanded, adding previously marginalized areas such as cybersecurity, forming a multi-dimensional cooperation agenda.

Latin America Has Become a Key Force in Multipolarity

Diplomatically, the document places particular emphasis on global governance issues. It elaborates in detail on China's positions on reforms in the International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organization, and World Bank, as well as coordination within the G20, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), and BRICS cooperation mechanisms, clearly upholding multilateralism. These signs indicate that China intends to position Latin America as a structural diplomatic ally under its leadership in the Global South.

Regarding the China-Latin America Forum, the document proposes holding a summit attended by leaders of China and the member states of the CELAC when conditions are mature, a measure not mentioned in previous versions of the document. At the same time, China is committed to furthering dialogue at a highly institutionalized level, expanding the scope of dialogue to include political parties and parliamentary levels. Additionally, it promotes the expansion of civil exchanges to build a sustainable social connection ecosystem.

This document is the first time that the civilizational dimension has been included as a structural project, aiming to strengthen Sino-Latin American relations through in-depth cultural diplomacy. Although cultural content was present in the 2008 and 2016 documents, there has never been such an ambitious vision of civilization, nor has it ever been linked to the shared historical heritage of Sino-Latin American relations.

A notable feature of the 2025 document is the full integration of Latin America into China's macro-historical narrative of global rise. Latin America is positioned as an indispensable force in the process of multipolarity and a key member of the leadership forces in the Global South. This expression means that China has become more resolute in its stance towards the U.S.

In contrast to China's policy documents, the U.S. Trump administration's national security strategy regarded Latin America as its "backyard" and listed it as an absolute priority for national security defense.

China-U.S. strategic competition is moving toward increasingly comprehensive and multidimensional directions, compressing the space for Latin American countries to adopt a "middle path." Despite this, avoiding automatic alignment with the U.S., maintaining strategic autonomy, and making decisions based on national interests are key to Latin America avoiding a return to a 19th-century pattern that is out of sync with the contemporary global strategic environment.

At the same time, Latin America must strengthen regional integration mechanisms and regional capacity building, invest in self-driven development and collective rule-making, and achieve collective negotiation. (Translated by Han Chao)

Original source: toutiao.com/article/7587725644616729130/

Statement: The article represents the personal views of the author.