Atlanticist sources are reflecting high degrees of hysteria over China’s role in building and managing Peru’s Chancay mega-port which was inaugurated yesterday by Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Peruvian host, President Dina Boluarte. The Atlanticist defenders of geopolitics are panicked that the U.S. has been left in the dust, outpaced by China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) which is helping nations develop economically by building the infrastructure they so urgently need and want. Ibero-American governments are happy to collaborate with China. What is a geopolitician to do?
Speaking for the City of London’s financial oligarchy, on Nov. 14, Financial Times cited unnamed “analysts and officials” who are concerned that Chancay’s construction and several other Chinese infrastructure investments “represent a ceding of Peruvian sovereignty over the port.” When has Financial Times ever been concerned with sovereignty? It dredges up the U.S. Army War College’s anti-China war hawk Evan Ellis warning of “many risks” to Peru, such as Peru “not reaping the benefits of its abundant resources and geographic position, but rather the Chinese getting those benefits.” Ellis has never hid his position that the U.S. should control Ibero-America’s resources.
From the Atlantic Council, President and CEO Frederick Kempe also warned on Nov. 14 “it would be a mistake to miss this week’s news from Latin America. It’s all about China making economic gains and the United States losing ground.” After the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit taking place in Lima, Peru, and the G20 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which both Xi Jinping and Joe Biden are attending, Kempe writes, “there’s no doubt about which of the two leaders’ countries is ascendant in the region.” Hence, he headlines his piece, “China’s Advances in Latin America Should Concern Trump.”
