Today, the Chinese embassy in Buenos Aires issued a scathing statement from its spokesperson denouncing U.S. ambassador Peter Lamelas for his “deliberately defamatory” remarks about China and China’s relationship with Argentina and Latin America, during an interview with El Tribuno newspaper in the province of Salta. The semi-official Global Times also reported on the spokesperson’s statement, charging that Lamelas’ remarks were “laden with ideological prejudice” and reflected a “zero-sum Cold War mentality.”
China is currently Argentina’s number-one trading partner, which relationship President Javier Milei has been forced to recognize as extremely important, even praising China as an “excellent” partner. He is scheduled to visit China in early July.
In his comments to El Tribuno’s editors, Lamelas promoted the “Donroe Doctrine,” Donald Trump’s idea that the U.S. is going to dominate the Western Hemisphere to the exclusion of China for sure. He complained that the U.S. had ignored Ibero-America for 40 or 50 years, so “the Chinese just moved in here.” And, he continued, dealing with China meant dealing with a “system controlled by a communist government which uses that control to manipulate information and people.” The United States ignored this region for too long, Lamelas said, but now it’s woken up, “with Milei, Trump and Marco Rubio … the Chinese are competition and have other interests and values. We have to be worried about that.”
