By Ruslan Stefanov, for CEPA
This report is a part of #CCPinCEE, a series of reports published by the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) analyzing Chinese influence efforts and operations across the nations of Central and Eastern Europe.
Goals and objectives of CCP malign influence
The People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) expanding engagement and presence in Latin America and the Caribbean has captured the attention of political and business leaders and the people of the region, as well as the United States. Although the PRC’s engagement and use of “soft power” has political, cultural, security and other dimensions, the attention that the PRC commands in the region is arguably driven primarily by the pace of China’s rise, and the lure of benefiting from China through engagement and business. For Latin America and the Caribbean, the PRC’s rise has been most directly felt through the PRC’s increasing importance as a partner in trade, loans, and investment for the region over the past two decades. Since the acceptance of the PRC into the World Trade Organization in 2001, PRC-Latin America trade has expanded 17-fold, from $18.5 billion in 2002, to $312 billion in 2020.1