China’s 2025 White Paper on Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) arrived days after Washington’s National Security Strategy flagged Chinese influence in the Western Hemisphere as a security threat. Beijing’s response is a 20,000-word document treating the U.S. hemispheric primacy as neither inevitable nor uncontested.
The White Paper claims continuity with earlier policy documents from 2008 and 2016. It codifies a strategy that is already quietly reshaping the strategic landscape of the Western Hemisphere through ports, telecommunications, space facilities, and local-currency financing that are beginning to bypass the dollar entirely.
But there are clear departures from the earlier white papers: where the previous documents led with commerce, the 2025 version foregrounds governance by ‘reforming’ global financial institutions like the IMF and World Bank, promoting alternative multilateral platforms including BRICS and the New Development Bank, privileging engagement through CELAC while excluding the US-inclusive institutions like the Organization of American States. This institutional choice reflects the clear intent to reshape the architecture of hemispheric politics in ways that dilute U.S. influence without ever naming it.
The language itself in the document is strategic: references to “unilateral bullying,” opposition to “decoupling,” support for Latin America’s “glorious tradition of independence” all echo long-standing regional grievances about U.S. sanctions, tariffs, and security interventions. China positions itself as defender of openness and autonomy, even as it advances its own interests. This rhetorical strategy allows Beijing to align with prevailing political sentiments without appearing overtly confrontational, ensuring its influence through affirmation, instead of assertion.
The White Paper also expands engagement into digital governance, artificial intelligence, space cooperation, climate governance, disaster response, and military-to-military exchanges, signalling deliberate expansion of China’s strategic footprint. The LAC region is no longer treated as a peripheral economic partner; instead it is treated as integral to China’s global initiatives on development, security, and governance.
Equally significant is the emphasis on financial mechanisms reducing dependence on the U.S. dollar. China promotes local-currency settlements, currency swaps, panda bonds, and alternative financing arrangements. Often presented as pragmatic responses to regional liquidity constraints, these measures also weaken U.S. financial leverage, particularly the effectiveness of sanctions and IMF conditionality during political or security crises. When Beijing offers financing without the strings Washington attaches, the choice becomes obvious.
The document also emphasizes subnational engagement. Cooperation with provinces, municipalities, mayors, and local authorities is explicitly encouraged. This strategy allows Beijing to bypass national-level scrutiny, embed projects below the security establishment radar, and create local political constituencies invested in continuing Chinese partnerships. Once established, such relationships are difficult to reverse, even when national governments change. More often than not, infrastructure is political.
The U.S. National Security Strategy (NSS) released in November 2025 represents a clear acknowledgement that the Western Hemisphere has become a site of strategic competition with China. The document identifies risks associated with Chinese control of ports, digital infrastructure, space facilities, and logistics corridors. It warns of vulnerabilities in supply chains, data security, and maritime access. But herein lies the problem: the NSS highlights a persistent gap between recognition and response. While it articulates the threat with increasing clarity, it offers few concrete mechanisms capable of matching China’s scale, speed, and financing model. U.S. development finance tools remain fragmented, underfunded, and subject to domestic political volatility. Trade policy continues to rely heavily on tariffs and enforcement rather than market access or long-term investment. Moreover, the return to overtly coercive hemispheric posture— migration pressure, sanctions, security-first tactics— has often reinforced the very grievances China exploits. While the NSS frames Latin America as strategically vital, U.S. engagement remains uneven, reactive, and constrained by election cycles and shifting domestic priorities.
This asymmetry is critical. China’s approach assumes decades-long timelines, infrastructure amortisation, and continuity across leadership changes. The U.S. approach remains largely episodic, recalibrated every four years. This results in a competition where China’s advantages are structural rather than tactical, and therefore harder to counter through policy statements alone.
China’s growing network of infrastructure across Latin America—ports, telecommunications systems, space facilities, surveillance platforms, logistics hubs—forms the material backbone of its White Paper ambitions. While formally civilian, this infrastructure is increasingly recognized as dual-use, capable of supporting both commercial activity and politically charged objectives.
Telecommunications and digital infrastructure constitute the first pillar. Chinese firms dominate large portions of 4G and 5G networks, smart-city platforms, and public surveillance systems across the region. These systems integrate data collection, AI-driven analytics, and surveillance capabilities in ways that enable political monitoring and data access. Once embedded, such systems are costly and technically difficult to replace, thus creating long-term dependence by design.
Ports and logistics form the second pillar. Chinese state-linked firms operate or construct terminals near critical chokepoints: the Panama Canal, the Caribbean basin, and the Pacific coast of South America. Control over port management systems, cranes, scanners, and shipping logistics provides visibility into trade flows and naval movements while offering latent access for resupply or disruption during crises.
Space infrastructure makes up the third pillar. Chinese ground stations and satellite cooperation agreements enhance regional scientific capacity, while also supporting tracking, communications, and intelligence functions central to modern military operations. Facilities like the PLA-operated space radar in Argentina exemplify how opaque governance arrangements coexist with formally civilian objectives.
Recent analyses of PLA wargaming, including simulations focused on the Caribbean, Cuba, and the Gulf of Mexico, suggest these assets are already incorporated into Chinese contingency planning. Latin America appears not as the primary battlefield, but as a rear-area theatre from which U.S. logistics, mobilization corridors, and maritime access could be monitored or disrupted during an Indo-Pacific conflict. However, most notably, China doesn’t require formal military bases or alliances to achieve these effects. Economic leverage, port control, telecommunications dominance, and commercial shipping networks may suffice. This approach allows Beijing to contest U.S. influence asymmetrically, avoiding overt militarization while still shaping the strategic environment.
The Caribbean deserves particular attention. Small island states sit astride vital sea lanes, host critical undersea cables, and occupy strategic space proximate to the U.S. mainland. China’s emphasis on disaster relief, climate resilience, and development assistance in these states provides a low-friction pathway to influence with outsized strategic implications.
Finally, these infrastructure investments are reinforced by softer forms of engagement: journalist exchanges, academic cooperation, training programs, and media partnerships. These initiatives shape elite perceptions, normalize Chinese presence, and reduce scrutiny of risks associated with Chinese projects. Influence is exercised not only through hardware but through narratives and norms.
Beijing’s 2025 White Paper codifies a strategy already visible on the ground. It leverages infrastructure, finance, institutions, and time to reshape the strategic landscape of the Western Hemisphere. Unless Washington develops a credible, sustained alternative capable of competing structurally, China’s dual-use infrastructure will continue transforming Latin America into something with which China can turn the tables on the United States vis-a-vis Taiwan
