~ Linn Maung ~
China’s engagement with Latin America is frequently cast as a new chapter in South-South cooperation, allegedly offering an alternative to Western domination. At the heart of this narrative is Beijing’s growing presence in regional forums, particularly its involvement with the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC). While these forums rhetorically seek to promote multilateral cooperation and regional development, a closer analysis reveals that China has been exploiting them to advance its own geopolitical and economic agenda. What appears on the surface to be mutually beneficial diplomacy is, in fact, a deliberate strategy to fragment regional unity, undermine democratic norms and untimely establish long-term dependencies through asymmetrical partnerships.
The China-CELAC Forum (CCF), launched in 2015, is a prime example of how Beijing has instrumentalized such regional institutions. Bypassing older institutions like the Organization of American States (OAS), the CCF functions as a strategic platform through which China promotes its core interests, most notably the One China principle, political non-alignment with the West, and endorsement of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). In the forum’s joint declarations, support for China’s sovereignty claims and a consistent lack of criticism for its domestic human rights record are glaringly apparent. Empirical evidence of the political returns China has extracted through this platform includes the diplomatic switches of Panama (2017), El Salvador (2018), the Dominican Republic (2018), and Nicaragua (2021) from Taiwan to Beijing. These moves, often occurring shortly after economic agreements or infrastructure commitments from China, reflect the highly transactional nature of Beijing’s forum diplomacy. The increasing expansion of such pattern also reveals how regional multilateralism is steadily being repurposed to serve China’s foreign policy objectives rather than regional priorities.
Economically, the China-CELAC framework has been used to normalize and expand Beijing’s influence via the BRI, yet in doing so, it has introduced problematic economic dependencies and governance challenges. Argentina, for instance, has seen a sharp rise in yuan-denominated currency swaps and Chinese-led infrastructure projects since its deeper engagement with China under the CCF framework. The country’s decision to join the BRI in 2022 was quickly followed by new rail development deals and energy investments with Chinese state-owned enterprises. These investments, often non-transparent, tied to Chinese contractors, and protected by confidentiality clauses, has successfully managed to evade public accountability too.
In Ecuador, China’s involvement in the construction of a hydroelectric dam led to long-term environmental damage and technical flaws that still plague the project. Moreover, the loan-for-oil agreements used to finance such endeavours have locked Ecuador into servicing Chinese debt under onerous conditions, limiting its economic flexibility. These economic arrangements are facilitated and legitimized under the umbrella of regional cooperation, but in practice they reflect the exploitative nature in which Latin American states are drawn into a form of economic dependency.
BRI and the Illusion of Multilateralism
China’s selective engagement with regional institutions further illustrates how it manipulates the concept of multilateralism. While it maintains bilateral ties with individual countries, it has also leveraged forums like the CCF to fragment Latin American unity and circumvent collective oversight. For example, rather than using existing integration mechanisms such as MERCOSUR or the Pacific Alliance, China has largely preferred to work through ad hoc groupings or bilateral deals that lack enforceable governance norms. This has invariably had the dual effect of weakening regional cohesion and empowering authoritarian-leaning governments to sidestep scrutiny.
One of the less visible but equally consequential aspects of China’s forum engagement in Latin America is its excessive investments in soft power. Through initiatives like Confucius Institutes and media cooperation agreements signed within the CCF framework, China has steadily embedded itself into the region’s cultural and information spheres. In 2019, Chinese state media signed memorandums of understanding with several Latin American media houses under the auspices of the CCF. This has allowed Chinese narratives, particularly those that defend the CPC’s model of governance and criticize Western democracies, to gain traction in regional discourses. In countries such as Cuba and Venezuela, Chinese media content is increasingly rebroadcast without attribution, blending into the domestic media landscape and reinforcing state propaganda. Such efforts to shape the informational environment are less about cultural exchange and more about narrative control, helping Beijing inoculate itself from criticism while subtly promoting authoritarian norms.
A Subversion of Regional Agency
The most troubling consequence of Beijing’s approach however, is the way it is eroding regional agencies. Forums like CELAC were conceived to increase Latin America’s collective bargaining power and independence, yet in their current configuration they are enabling a new form of external dependence. By flooding the region with finance, infrastructure, and political support, often with few strings attached, China has encouraged short-term decision-making that prioritizes elite interests over long-term development or democratic consolidation. The tendency to engage in closed-door agreements with Beijing, devoid of parliamentary oversight or civil society involvement, has by far undermined the very principles of participatory governance that many Latin American countries have fought hard to establish. Rather than empowering regional voices, China’s misuse of multilateral platforms has allowed it to dictate terms, set agendas, and shape outcomes that overwhelmingly serve its national interest.
In sum, China’s engagement with Latin America through regional forums like the China-CELAC Forum are indicative of not a commitment to genuine multilateral cooperation but a calculated effort to reshape the regional order in its own image. Beijing’s model of engagement which is selective, opaque, and highly transactional, threatens to distort the purpose of regional institutions and compromise the autonomy of states that participate in them. The challenge for Latin America is not merely to manage its relationship with China, but to reclaim the integrity and independence of its multilateral structures before they become vehicles for external manipulation. If these forums are to serve the region’s development, they must be reoriented toward transparency, collective governance, and a pluralistic diplomacy that resists capture by any single power, however benevolent its rhetoric may appear.
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