Why is the US uneasy about China’s troubled US$3.6 billion port project in Peru?
- Unprecedented logistics centre in Latin America financed by Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative is locked in a legal battle over its operation
- Port, slated for inauguration when Chinese leader Xi Jinping attends Apec, would sit on America’s ‘20-yard-line’, US general warns
An ambitious multibillion-dollar Chinese investment in a Peruvian megaport that would open a conduit for critical minerals and other strategic South American commodities to Asia could come undone before its planned opening in November, stymied by a legal dispute over how much control its developer will get.
Political pressure from Washington is also mounting as the dispute plays out.
US alarm over Beijing’s deepening ties to the region centres on concern that it could be converted for military use and how data passing through the massive operation would be safeguarded, said General Laura Richardson, commander of US Southern Command.
“In terms of our national security concerns, there are all kinds of things that we can come up with and think through,” Richardson said last week, while urging Latin American countries to embrace safer business “alternatives” for such projects.
‘The Shanghai of South America’
