Not Just Panama: China Expands Its Presence in the Americas

While President Donald Trump’s stated desire to regain control of the Panama Canal has drawn long-overdue attention to Communist China’s ambitions to control the most important waterway in the Western Hemisphere, Panama isn’t the only nation in the Americas where Beijing is expanding its influence and control.

Even as the United States prepared to give up control of the Panama Canal in 1999, some American leaders were warning that such a move would present a perfect opportunity for China to extend its reach further into the United States’ backyard. When companies based in China won contracts to control two of the four canal ports – one on each side of the waterway – then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott warned that America had “given away the farm” and that “U.S. naval ships will be at the mercy of Chinese-controlled pilots and could even be denied passage.”

“America is going to be vulnerable because we now have created a vacuum in which some very evil forces – drug dealers, communist Chinese and others – are coming in to fill that void in Panama,” California Republican Dana Rohrabacher added. Caspar Weinberger, who served as Secretary of Defense under President Ronald Reagan, likewise warned of “catastrophic” consequences of China’s interference in Panama Canal operations.

But all of these concerns were dismissed as alarmist and overblown by congressional Democrats and President Bill Clinton, who orchestrated handing control of the canal over to Panama. Clinton specifically said he was “comfortable” with the Chinese companies taking over the ports.

But now Clinton’s critics have proven prescient as Beijing has used its presence in Panama to extend its reach elsewhere in South and Central America.

Earlier this month, for instance, news broke that China Merchants Port Holdings Co. had acquired Vast Infraestrutura, the operator of Brazil’s only privately-owned port capable of handling large oil tankers. China Merchants is a subsidiary of China Merchants Group, a state-owned enterprise directly overseen by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, which answers to China’s central government and, ultimately, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The deal means that the CCP effectively controls a major port less than 24 hours from Brazil’s offshore oil production fields.

Last November, Chinese President Xi Jinping also inaugurated the massive $1.3 billion Chancay Port Terminal in Peru that will be entirely controlled by Beijing, further boosting China’s influence in the region. Located about 48 miles from the capital of Lima, Xi said that the Chancay port was part of the “21st century Maritime Silk Road” – part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative to expand its influence globally. China is also building a railroad from Brazil to export goods through the port.

Back in 2022, the Center for Strategic and International Studies reported that China now has a foothold in some 40 ports in the Americas, along with 11 different landlocked sites scattered throughout Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, and Venezuela.

“Investment in seaports and shipping lanes has always been a key component of the PLA’s [People’s Liberation Army] war readiness,” Professor Luli Jiaolong told me in an interview. Luli served in the top economic policy-making body of the Chinese Communist Party before defecting to the West.

“Mao once said that if trade does not enhance the PLA, it’s a bad deal,” Luli added. He also emphasized that the “fundamentals of Chinese industry and science” are based on the “fusion of military and civilian purpose and goals” – something the Trump administration understands.

In China, all areas of life are viewed as a war front, Luli explained. This includes international trade and the ambitions of companies controlled by the CCP to expand their influence in the regions closest to China’s top economic and geopolitical rival – the United States.

As Dr. Huang Kan, who advised the CCP’s Standing Committee before leaving China in the 1990s, told me, “About 40 percent of transoceanic civilian vessels are equipped for PLA logistics.” Moreover, about 20 percent of Chinese-controlled ports in foreign countries are “PLA ready” and were specifically designed to refuel and service warships, including aircraft carriers.

While too many American leaders are silent about this threat, President Trump and some congressional Republicans seem to recognize the gravity of the situation now unfolding in Panama and the rest of South and Central America. Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas makes this a primary focus in his latest book, Seven Things You Can’t Say About China, which came out last month.

The book highlights how many American elites, including politicians, are under the influence of the CCP and explains why abandoning the Panama Canal in the first place was such a consequential strategic blunder.

“China has given our elites far more than thirty pieces of silver, but everything comes at a price,” Cotton writes. Everyone who enabled the CCP’s global territorial ambitions had to “bend the knee to Communist China and often act as de facto accomplices in Beijing’s crimes.”

Dr. Huang Kan called Cotton’s description of China as an “Evil Empire” the most truthful thing he had heard from a Western elected official in years.

With nearly a full term left before him, President Trump may indeed succeed in re-asserting U.S. control over the Panama Canal and kicking China out. That would be a positive development for the United States – so long as America’s leaders recognize that the problem of Chinese influence has become so much bigger and more widespread than just Panama.

Ben Solis is the pen name of an international affairs journalist, historian, and researcher.