U.S. anxieties about China’s increasingly influential presence in Latin America and the Caribbean will be a popular topic of discussion on Capitol Hill this week.
Conservative Texas Senator Ted Cruz will introduce a new bipartisan resolution that calls on the United States to develop closer ties with the four-nation group Alliance for Development in Democracy, which includes the Dominican Republic, Panama, Costa Rica and Ecuador, to confront Chinese influence in the region.
On the other side of the legislature, the House Foreign Affairs Committee Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere will convene a hearing to discuss “the threat of China’s malign influence in Latin America.”
The timing of these new China-focused legislative initiatives on The Hill coincides with mounting anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States fueled by a surge of illegal border crossings and a refugee crisis in many of America’s largest (Democrat-run) cities.
This means it’s going to be very difficult to get the public’s buy-in to fund any kind of large-scale development or trade initiatives that could potentially rival China’s economic engagement in the region.
Already, the Biden administration is under pressure for the billions it has spent to support Ukraine rather than on social programs at home — making it impossible to consider that Congress would then turn around and finance any kind of major initiative in the Americas, even if it is against China.
So, it’s likely there will be a lot of “counter China” rhetoric from U.S. lawmakers this week but little else in the way of substantive foreign policy initiatives.
WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT? China’s presence in the Americas touches a raw nerve in the U.S. body politic, far more than what Beijing does in any other Global South region. Even though the Monroe Doctrine is no longer an official policy, there’s still this feeling among many high-level U.S. stakeholders that other major powers like the Chinese or the Russians just shouldn’t be allowed to operate freely in the Western Hemisphere.
You won’t hear many express it that way, but they’re thinking it. But the problem for those folks, whether they know it or not, is there really isn’t anything they can do about it.
SUGGESTED READING:
- South China Morning Post: Latin America expert takes over as head of Chinese friendship association by Sylvie Zhang
- United States Institute of Peace: How Should the U.S. Respond to China’s Influence in Latin America? by Nicolás Devia-Valbuena and Alberto Mejia
