“There are absolutely ambitions for China to become the dominant influence in Latin America,” Haydar added. “The challenge is comprehensive, and there’s absolutely a security and military interest there. … That threat is growing, and it’s a different kind of threat than what we saw with the Soviet threat.”
Chinese Communist Party officials have unveiled an “action plan for cooperation” with Latin American countries that amounts to a “comprehensive” plan to cultivate influence and threaten American interests, following a new ministerial with the nearest neighbors of the United States.
“The Chinese don’t say, ‘We want to take over Latin America,’ but they clearly set out a multidimensional engagement strategy, which, if successful, would significantly expand their leverage and produce enormous intelligence concerns for the United States,” U.S. Army War College research professor Evan Ellis, a former member of the State Department policy planning staff, told the Washington Examiner.
Chinese officials outlined their ambitions following a ministerial with the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States. This intergovernmental forum was launched in 2011 under the auspices of the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who wanted a venue to rival the Organization of American States and challenge U.S. influence in Latin America, and it now stands to furnish Chinese General Secretary Xi Jinping with a platform to gather a coalition of leftist and authoritarian leaders congenial to Beijing’s interests.
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