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Chinese companies have built or operate 31 active ports in Latin America and the Caribbean, many more than previously thought, according to research by a Washington-based think-tank.
The US has grown increasingly concerned about the implications for its national security of Beijing’s leverage over critical infrastructure in Latin America as Chinese groups have bought up power companies, mines, telecoms networks and ports over the past two decades.
Research by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, shared with the Financial Times in advance of publication, found Chinese involvement in more than twice as many ports across the region from Mexico to Chile as had previously been reported by US researchers.
The CSIS count included seven active ports run by Hong Kong’s CK Hutchison. It found four more port projects involving Chinese companies had been cancelled and two others were currently inactive.
Donald Trump’s administration has been particularly vocal about the risks it says are posed by Chinese control over ports at each end of the Panama Canal. CK Hutchison subsequently agreed to sell its global port operations to subsidiaries of US giant BlackRock and the Geneva-based Mediterranean Shipping Company.
But CSIS said its research found ports in Jamaica and Mexico represented a bigger risk to US national security, when scored on metrics including the amount of US trade passing through them, US naval activity and proximity to American military facilities or strategic chokepoints.
“The most risky port in the Western Hemisphere was Kingston, Jamaica,” said CSIS’s Henry Ziemer, who led the research. “It moves a tremendous amount of commerce, is located in a country which is a strategic ally of the US and is controlled by China Merchants Port, a state-owned group.”
CSIS assessed the Mexican ports of Manzanillo and Veracruz, both operated by CK Hutchison, as the next riskiest for US security. “The US depends tremendously on trade with these ports,” said Ziemer. “If Manzanillo were disrupted it would impose a cost on the US economy of $134mn a day and in the case of Veracruz $63mn a day.”
Concerns have centred on China’s ability to use port facilities to disrupt US commerce, to deny US warships access in the event of conflict between Washington and Beijing, or to resupply its own naval vessels. The research assessed how exposed US trade and security interests were at each port and also looked at the degree of Chinese influence.
Evan Ellis, Latin America research professor at the US Army War College, said that while each Chinese port company had a commercial reason for its involvement, the People’s Liberation Army Navy “looks at this and sees a strategic advantage”.
“There’s a broader strategy here,” he said. “A strong and powerful Chinese state wants food and energy security. From a PLA perspective, if we do have to fight a war against the US, we want access to these ports.”
China has rejected US claims that CK Hutchison’s Panama Canal operations give the country influence that could undermine US security. Its foreign ministry said in April that Washington was “spreading rumours and making trouble” in order to find an excuse to “attempt to control the canal”.
Laura Richardson, the former head of US Southern Command, which is responsible for American military operations in Central and South America, told the FT last year that Peru’s new $1.3bn Chinese-built megaport of Chancay could potentially be used by China’s navy.
Chinese port projects “just happen to be around” strategic locations and trade routes, Richardson said. “You have to ask yourself: ‘Why all this investment in these kinds of things?’”
Ellis and Ziemer both noted that Beijing had expressed anger over CK Hutchison’s proposed sale of its global port interests to BlackRock and MSC, using arguments about national security.
A Beijing-backed newspaper in Hong Kong, Ta Kung Pao, accused CK Hutchison of “spineless grovelling” and said the deal to sell its ports “betrayed and sold out all Chinese people”. China’s antitrust regulator has ordered a review of the transaction.
“China’s own words about the Hutchison deal show the importance to them of controlling ports,” said Ziemer. “Ports also offer Beijing a tremendous wealth of information on cargo movements.”
Cartography by Steven Bernard
