China’s Xi arrives in Lima for APEC, to open Pacific megaport By Reuters

By Eduardo Baptista, Marco Aquino and Lucinda Elliott

LIMA (Reuters) -Chinese language President Xi Jinping arrived in Lima on Thursday, kicking off a week-long diplomatic blitz in Latin America by inaugurating the large Chancay deep-water port, one in every of Beijing’s most bold infrastructure investments in Latin America.

Xi will take part within the Asia-Pacific Financial Cooperation (APEC) summit in Lima earlier than heading to the Group of 20 summit in Rio de Janeiro subsequent week. Xi will even conduct state visits to Peru and Brazil, each main sources of metallic ores, soybeans, and different commodities that maintain key Chinese language industries like electrical autos and pork, in addition to guaranteeing meals safety for the nation’s inhabitants of 1.4 billion.

Xi’s first order of enterprise in Lima is to headline an inauguration ceremony for the Chancay port, together with Peru’s President Dina Boluarte.

“Chancay…will revolutionize commerce and dynamize the Asia-Pacific financial system,” Boluarte stated in a speech on Thursday on the APEC CEO Summit.

The China-controlled megaport, constructed by Cosco Transport Ports and positioned on Peru’s Pacific coast north of Lima, has already drawn $1.3 billion in Chinese language funding, with billions extra anticipated as Beijing and Lima look to show Chancay into a significant delivery hub between Asia and South America.

“We have to collectively construct and handle nicely the Chancay port, make ‘from Chancay to Shanghai’ actually turn out to be a affluent path to selling the joint growth of China-Peru, and China- Latin America,” Xi wrote in an opinion article revealed on Thursday within the official every day El Peruano.

Mario Ocharan, Peruvian director of the Chancay Chamber of Commerce instructed Reuters that the primary ship was as a consequence of set sail the week of November 18, transporting Peruvian fruit to China.

The true purpose of the megaport in response to Ocharan was entry to neighboring Brazil, the place a brand new railway line will join the port to Brazilian provides.

“The Koreans and Chinese language have expressed curiosity in constructing the railway” he stated.

GEOPOLITICAL AND ECONOMIC HEADWINDS

The inauguration of the port comes at a time when Beijing is seeking to additional faucet into resource-rich Latin American area, amid commerce tensions with Europe and issues about future tariffs from the incoming Trump administration.

Xi is being accompanied by a delegation of over 100 Chinese language enterprise executives, together with heads of corporations with the most important investments in Peru, together with Cosco Transport and mining agency Chinalco, which owns the Toromocho mine.

Chancay, China’s largest funding in a Latin American port, has raised alarm bells in Washington. Basic Laura Richardson, former U.S. Southern Command chief, warned earlier this month earlier than retiring that Chancay might be utilized by the Chinese language army’s navy and for intelligence-gathering.

U.S. anxieties about Chancay replicate a broader, decades-long shift in a area often called Washington’s yard that has seen China overtake the USA to turn out to be the most important buying and selling companion of nations like Peru.

China’s state-backed International Occasions wrote in an editorial revealed on Monday that the port was a “bridge for sensible cooperation between China and Latin America and is under no circumstances a software for geopolitical competitors”, calling U.S. accusations of the port’s potential army use “smears”.