Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) will be holding its annual summit from Nov. 14-16 in Lima, Peru this year. Chinese President Xi Jinping will be there, and he will join Peruvian President Dina Boluarte to inaugurate the massive Chancay port complex on Nov. 14. Chancay is being built with 60% funding from China’s Cosco Shipping Ports and other Chinese companies, and 40% from Peru, and it is designed to be the “Shanghai” of South America. It is meant to open up all of South America to the Belt and Road Initiative, especially if Brazil decides to join the BRI when Xi Jinping visits that country for the G20 summit on Nov. 18-19, right after APEC. Among the specific projects on the table are the keystone plan to build a bi-oceanic rail corridor connecting Brazil’s Atlantic coast to Peru’s Pacific coast—at Chancay.
Besides a more-than-suspicious Peruvian transport workers strike called for Nov. 11, whose stated purpose is to force Boluarte to resign as President so that the APEC summit can’t proceed, there is an even larger strategic threat looming over the Chancay project and the effort to extend the BRI and the BRICS to South America: Outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden has decided he wants to go to both the APEC and G20 summits, and he will be descending on Lima, Peru with 600 U.S. Army, Air Force and Marine personnel “to protect him”—and who will be there for three weeks, from Nov. 4-24.
