Twenty days less. This will be the time saved by a container ship to reach the China from its main raw material supplier, Brazil. Thanks to port of Chancay, financed and built 100% by Beijing on coasts of Peru, the two countries that are each other's major trading partners will thus "get closer" by 7.000 km. It will only be a matter of completing the road infrastructure of the Rota Amazonica to connect both sides of South America, and then the goods will be able to set sail directly from the Pacific, with considerable time and therefore economic benefits, especially for perishable products such as food, which are the vast majority. The port of Chancay, which not surprisingly sounds like a new Shanghai, is located 80 km north of the capital Lima and will be inaugurated a November by Chinese President Xi Jinping in person: the Dragon has invested a whopping 3,6 billion dollars in it, with 60% ownership by the state maritime transport and logistics company Cosco Shipping, and the rest by the Peruvian mining company Volcan.
Chancay: Beijing's new hub in South America
Built on an area of 280 hectares, the infrastructure will have a carbon footprint reduced to a minimum because it is completely electrified, with the container part automated and connected with 5G technology, and will initially be able to allow transit one million containers and 6 million tons of cargo per year. The objective is clear: to become the main commercial hub of South America, capable of facilitating and speeding up trade with China but also of intensifying relations between the countries in the area themselves. Chancay is just the latest example of how Beijing has now got its hands onLatin america, from which it imports mostly agri-food raw materials (soya, beef, but not only) in exchange for investments like this one in Perù or like the one done in Brazil in another strategic port, that of Santos, where another state company, Cofco, has financed with 1,6 billion dollars the expansion of an infrastructure that will support the export of 14 million tons per year of soybeans, corn, cotton and coffee towards Asia. Cofco now has the same weight as a trader of agri-food products in Brazil as the US Cargill and Bunge, demonstrating that Latin America is increasingly oriented towards the Silk Road and less and less towards its historical partner with the stars and stripes.
South America increasingly strategic and distant from the USA
Same China, to sell its products, tip more and more about emerging countries and less on the United States: for example, the sale of electric cars doubled in 2023 towards South-East Asia, the Mexico and again the Brazil, which already in 2022 had returned to being the Dragon's first partner with record trade of 150 billion dollars, 16 times more than what happened in 2004, during the first Lula government. The US has also noticed this shift of axis, with some belated recriminations: "Chancay will make it even easier for the Chinese to extract resources from the region, it is very worrying", he told the Wall Street Journal the general of the army Laura Richardson, head of the United States Southern Command, adding that there are also fears about the dual use of the port, i.e. that it could be used for military and intelligence purposes. Washington made it very clear in Lima that it resented China's control of infrastructure in Peru, but South America is no longer the United States' backyard.
Indeed, Chancay's is not even the only project of its kind: according to research by the Council on Foreign Relations, Chinese companies are investing in as many as 92 ports outside China, including the European ones of Hamburg, Athens, Rotterdam. And it's not even just Beijing that carries out operations of this type: the port of Callao, near the capital Lima, currently concentrates the vast majority of port activities in Peru and will almost double its capacity with the entry into operation within two years of a new dock, the result of an investment of 400 million dollars by the company Emirates DP World. “We need to get closer to Asia. The world is here”, he had already summed up José Dirceu, former minister in the Lula government, during a visit to China a few years ago.
