Beijing – Xi Jinping did not even have to mention Donald Trump by name to transmit his point of view.
The Chinese president was giving hard sale to a room full of high -ranking Latin American leaders on Tuesday. He promoted the stability and fundamental reasonability of his country, providing a clear contrast between him and the erratic trade war of his US counterpart.
“Bullying and coercion only lead to isolation,” he said in Beijing in the United States and Caribbean forum in the United States and the Caribbean America. The context was clear.
The two largest economies in the world are still involved in a commercial war that has also wrapped almost all countries of the land, including more than 30 Latin American and Caribbean countries who sent heads of state and senior officials to the forum on Tuesday.
In their first public comments since the United States and China agreed a 90 -day break in most of their taxes in commercial conversations during the weekend, XI said Beijing was ready to work with Latin American and Caribbean countries against “growing geopolitical tensions and block confrontation, unilateralism and protectionism.”
While Trump has allies such as the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, and Argentine president Javier Milei, has moved a large part of Latin America with its threats to “recover” the Panama Canal and its derogatory comments on immigrants, said Barbara Fernández Melleda, a professor assisting in Latin American studies at Hong Kong University.
“It seems that Donald Trump is certainly adverse Latin American, and the way he has been talking about the Latin American community in the United States has been really sad for us,” he said.
“What is happening, not only in Latin America, is that countries are saying: ‘Well, if these large countries are becoming hostile, we should find other associations.”
China played those tensions in the period prior to the forum, rejecting the idea that Latin American and Caribbean countries are in the “backyard” of anyone.
“What the people of Latin America and the Caribbean seek are independence and self -determination, not the so -called Monroe doctrine,” Chinese state media refer to the so -called new doctrine of Monroe. “
The Cuban ambassador to China, Alberto Blanco Silva, told NBC News after Xi’s speech that saw China “as a stability, balance and opportunity factor, not only for the world, but also for Latin America.”
China is the second largest commercial partner in Latin America after the United States, and Latin America is the largest destination for Chinese outward investment outside Asia. Last year, total trade between China and Latin America exceeded $ 500 billion for the first time, compared to $ 12 billion in 2000.
Beijing has also been cultivating Latin American ties with one eye over Taiwan, autonomous island democracy that sees as a separatist province. Most of Taiwan’s few remaining diplomatic allies are found in the region, and China took off one of them, Honduras, in 2023.
Chinese influence in Latin America can be seen in electric vehicles on its roads, as well as mass infrastructure projects, such as the Puerto de Chancay of $ 1.3 billion in Peru.
While there are concerns and criticism about such projects, the relationship of Latin American countries with China “seems to be more symmetrical than we are used to,” especially compared to the United States and the former colonial rulers in Europe, said Fernández Melleda.
XI said on Tuesday that China would import more from Latin America, would encourage Chinese companies to increase investment and provide 66 billion yuan ($ 9.1 billion) in new credit to support Latin American and Caribbean financing.
The Chinese leader also said he wanted to deepen the participation of Latin America in the Belt and Road Infrastructure Initiative of Beijing. The Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, who in January agreed to accept deportation flights from the United States after Trump threatened him with radical tariffs, said his country that his country would join Belt and Road.
Eric Baculinao reported Beijing and Jennifer Jett of Hong Kong.
