The Day the US and China Will Start Fighting 🌐⚖️

In November 2024, Chinese president Xi Jinping personally inaugurated the construction of a port in Chancay, Peru, with an initial $1.3 billion investment. 🤑

Operated and majority-owned by COSCO, a Chinese state-owned shipping enterprise, Puerto Chancay is now the largest and most influential deep-water port on South America’s Pacific Coast. It already gives the People’s Republic of China (PRC) critical access to South American minerals and agriculture. 🌊

But it could also do much more; the Pentagon has warned about Puerto Chancay’s dual-use potential for naval offensives against the US homeland. 🚢

China’s Peruvian port may be its most significant strategic win to date on the American continent, but it is not its first. Over the past two decades, while the United States tried to develop democracies abroad, China has been quietly building an infrastructure empire across Latin America and the Caribbean, with the aim of economically and militarily alienating the continent from US interests. 🎯

The PRC’s weapon of choice in this offensive has been state-backed financial investment schemes. China’s banks are now a leading source of investments for Latin American nations, particularly those with high energy or trade significance. And those investments are progressing. In May of 2025, Colombia became the latest Latin American nation to join the Belt and Road Initiative. 🗺

This represents a critical win for Beijing, because Bogotá was once a key US ally. In recent years, however, Colombia has tilted toward China and regional American adversaries under its first leftist president, Gustavo Petro. 🧑‍🦳

Colombia now joins two-thirds of South American nations as a member of the BRI, granting Beijing significant political and economic influence over the Western Hemisphere through its de facto control of valuable infrastructure projects and expansive loan collection. 💰

Not everything is going China’s way, however. Panama recently filed a lawsuit against the Chinese operators of two ports, respectively located at each end of its vital canal, after Beijing halted the ports’ sale to US companies. 🛡

With financial control over the Panama Canal fleeting, China has turned to alternate trade routes to project power. Its backup runs through Chancay via the new shipping schedule WSA5, which directly connects Shanghai and Qingdao, China, to South America. 🚢

This single line, spanning South America’s west coast, is the first to directly connect Colombian, Ecuadorian, and Peruvian ports to China and is projected to lower delivery costs by 20 percent. 📈

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