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A Recommendation from an Unlikely Source: Let Trump and China Work Jointly on Infrastructure in the Americas

Foreign Policy, the U.S. magazine founded by geopolitician Samuel Huntington, published an article Dec. 16 written by two senior research fellows at London’s Chatham House, on the subject of “What China Got Right in Latin America.” Authors Yu Jie (China expert) and Christopher Sabatini (Latin American expert) pose the contrast between what Presidents Xi Jinping and Joe Biden brought to November’s APEC Summit to make their point: Xi oversaw the inauguration of the Chinese-built Chancay Port in Peru; Biden brought nine Black Hawk helicopters—important, but “far from a game-changing megaport investment.”

That difference has been the case for decades. “China has brought real resources to address development opportunities that have long been lacking in the region—and that the United States has failed to recognize for decades,” the authors point out. Beijing has been “committed to and promoting the type of infrastructure investments that drove its own economic miracle for Latin America and the Global South”—and its poverty alleviation, they note. “China has poured approximately $634 billion into building physical infrastructure worldwide and $419 billion in nonfinancial investments across the developing world” over the past two decades, while “the U.S.-led West [provided] ... high-minded rhetoric about democracy, human rights, and accountability.”

Watch out, they caution. Ibero-America does not view this as “a geopolitical contest” between China and the U.S., but is concerned about their political and civil rights and economic futures, so U.S. “saber-rattling and threats … may even have the opposite effect.”

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