China and Russia: Tech Partnerships and Geopolitical Leverage in Latin America

Over the past two decades, Latin America has undergone a profound digital and geopolitical transformation, shaped increasingly by China and Russia’s strategic push into infrastructure, technology, and information domains. From the rollout of high-speed networks and urban surveillance grids to space cooperation and military training, these partnerships have reconfigured the region’s economy and future development paths—raising urgent questions about sovereignty, security, and governance. The tectonic shifts of early 2026—most dramatically the US capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January—have thrown the limits of both Chinese and Russian influence into sharp relief, even as Beijing’s economic footprint continues to expand at record pace.

China’s Expanding Footprint

China’s influence in Latin America has grown exponentially since the early 2000s. In 2000, Chinese trade with the region totaled around $12 billion. By 2024, it reached a record $518.47 billion—a figure that surpassed Beijing’s own ten-year target set a decade ago—and some economists project it could exceed $700 billion by 2035. This growth has accelerated further in 2025 as Chinese exporters redirect shipments away from the United States in response to steep American tariffs, with Latin America’s share of outbound Chinese goods climbing to around 8%  by mid-2025.

Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), now extended to 21 Latin American and Caribbean countries, underpins this transformation: It enables not only the construction of ports, roads, and rail networks but also the deployment of large-scale technology projects. The flagship Chancay deep-water port in Peru, inaugurated in late 2024, exemplifies China’s enduring interest in controlling regional logistics chokepoints. Still, Latin America’s share of global BRI investment has contracted sharply, accounting for just 1.14% of construction projects and 0.4% of investment in the first half of 2025, as Beijing reorients toward other regions and monitors returns on overseas commitments.

China’s hunger for critical minerals—especially lithium, copper, and rare earths—has fueled direct investment in mining consortia and partnerships in the so-called Lithium Triangle. Latin America supplied approximately 98% of China’s imports of lithium carbonate in 2024 and around three-quarters of its soybean imports. By controlling extraction and supply chains, Beijing is securing a vital piece of the global green energy transition for its own manufacturing base. China’s direct investment in Latin America reached $14.71 billion in 2024, while Chinese electric vehicle exports to the region grew 55% in 2023, totaling $4.2 billion.

Russia’s Constrained but Persistent Presence

Russia’s footprint, though far less commercial, has long been strategically targeted. Moscow’s approach centers on military cooperation, information operations, and engagement with autocratic-aligned governments, particularly Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua. Russian defense exports, cyber agreements, and military-to-military exercises expanded through the early 2020s, and its digital outreach—sometimes in tandem with China—has pursued the shaping of public narratives, media streams, and political cognition through outlets such as RT and Sputnik.

The strategic landscape shifted dramatically on January 3, 2026, when US forces conducted Operation Absolute Resolve, capturing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in Caracas. For Russia, one of the Maduro government’s closest external partners, the consequences are severe: Moscow’s credibility as a security guarantor in the Western Hemisphere has been gravely damaged and the comprehensive Russia–Venezuela Strategic Partnership signed in May 2025— which had affirmed cooperation in energy, finance, military, and communications through to 2041—is now effectively void. Russia’s response was largely symbolic. Despite Maduro’s October 2025 plea to Putin for missiles, fighter-jet repairs, and radar equipment, Moscow dispatched only a single air-defense system and an Ilyushin military transport aircraft, reflecting the constraints of a military stretched by the war in Ukraine and an economy laboring under sanctions.

Russia’s remaining foothold in Central America is largely through Nicaragua. A 2022 agreement authorizes the temporary entry of Russian troops, ships, and aircraft into Nicaraguan territory, and in September 2025, the Nicaraguan army participated in the Zapad-2025 exercises held in Belarus and Kaliningrad alongside Russian and Belarusian forces. Russia also continues to operate a global navigation satellite system ground station in Nicaragua, which has drawn scrutiny as a potential signals intelligence base. Yet, with Venezuela neutralized and Cuba’s economy fragile, Russian arms sales to the region have declined to near insignificance: Military cooperation is now primarily limited to Cuba, Nicaragua, and the now-leaderless Venezuela, while Russia’s share of regional trade remains below 2%. Moscow’s most scalable remaining tools are information operations—low-cost and difficult to attribute.

Chinese Technology Dominance and Digital Sovereignty

The dominance of Chinese firms such as Huawei in Latin America’s telecom sector is now well established. Huawei remains the world’s largest telecom equipment supplier outside North America, holding around 40% of that market as of 2025, with major operator contracts across Latin America. Chinese companies are also deeply embedded in smart city initiatives, supplying surveillance camera grids, connected transport, and data management platforms to governments from Mexico to Chile.

The increasing reliance on Chinese and Russian technology raises deep concerns over digital sovereignty and policy autonomy. The ability to set and enforce independent rules for data, communications, and critical infrastructure—vital for economic and national security—is often constrained by the dominance of foreign firms and tightly controlled intellectual property and standards. Experts such as Cecilia Rikap and Evgeny Morozov have warned that structural dependence on Chinese and US platforms can amount to a form of “digital colonialism,” where vital public functions and societal priorities are shaped by algorithms and code beyond local control.

Latin American countries, acutely aware of their vulnerabilities, have initiated assertive digital policies. Brazil’s Marco Civil da Internet is internationally recognized for setting user rights, net neutrality, and data protection standards. Regional investments, such as undersea cables to Portugal, were a direct response to strategic security exposures. However, experts and development organizations note persistent deficits: a lack of an integrated digital market, fragmented political vision, and an innovation ecosystem dominated by global supply chains.

The COVID-19 pandemic greatly intensified digital reliance. As governments rushed to digitize public services, education, health, and transport, they overwhelmingly adopted external solutions: Microsoft’s platforms for digital government, Google’s mobility tracking, Huawei for cloud infrastructure, and Chinese-led consortia for e-health deployments. The Atlantic Council has noted this trend poses strategic risks, including the possibility that Chinese control over vital digital and physical chokepoints, such as the Panama Canal, could ultimately undermine US and regional interests. That concern came to a head in early 2026 when Panama’s Supreme Court annulled CK Hutchison’s port concessions, transferring interim operations away from the Hong Kong-based firm—a development discussed in detail below.

Information Warfare and Cognitive Influence

Alongside economic and technical penetration, China and Russia have ramped up information manipulation, media campaigns, and cognitive warfare. Narratives are embedded through local outlets, state media partnerships, and online disinformation, weakening local institutions and public scrutiny. These trends exploit regulatory and awareness gaps, as well as insufficient investment in independent local media and fact-checking infrastructure. Russia’s reduced conventional leverage in the wake of Operation Absolute Resolve is likely to make information operations—low-cost, scalable, and deniable—an even more central instrument of Russian strategy in the region.

The US Policy Response: The Trump Corollary and “Shield of the Americas”

The events of early 2026 have coincided with a sharp intensification of US engagement in the region under the Trump administration’s so-called Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine—a strategic posture aimed at denying non-hemispheric competitors the ability to own or control strategically vital assets in the Western Hemisphere. In March 2026, the administration hosted a “Shield of the Americas” summit at Mar-a-Lago, drawing more than a dozen Latin American heads of state but notably excluding Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia. The summit’s centerpiece was countering Chinese infrastructure and investment, though analysts noted that the administration’s simultaneous cuts to foreign assistance, imposition of tariffs, and high-handed tone left many regional leaders reluctant to sever economic ties with Beijing. As one senior researcher at Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center observed, the United States was effectively offering the region tariffs, deportations, and militarization while China was offering trade and investment. China remains the leading or second trade partner across virtually all of South America, a structural reality that coercive diplomacy alone cannot quickly reverse. Beijing’s own response—a third policy paper on Latin America and the Caribbean, released in late 2025—clarified that Beijing intends to deepen engagement regardless of US pressure, using multilateral forums, people-to-people diplomacy, and the One China Principle as leverage. The net effect is a region increasingly compelled to navigate a sharpening great-power rivalry it did not choose and from which it has little institutional shelter.

Post-Maduro Venezuela: A Test Case for Chinese Exposure

The fall of Maduro has created one of the most consequential tests of Chinese economic diplomacy in the region. Beijing’s outstanding exposure in Venezuela—built up over two decades of oil-for-loans financing—is estimated at between $10 billion and $20 billion, much of it collateralized by crude oil shipments now subject to US control or redirection. A successor government, dependent on IMF support and American goodwill to stabilize its economy, is likely to invoke the “odious debt” doctrine to challenge the legitimacy of obligations incurred by its predecessor, as analysts at AidData and Columbia’s Center on Global Energy Policy have warned. China’s state oil companies—CNPC, Sinopec, and joint ventures operating under Venezuela’s Anti-Blockade Law—face contract revisions, asset revaluation, and delayed repayments. Even assuming Venezuelan crude continues to flow eastward in the short term—which Caracas has sought to reassure Beijing will remain the case—the geopolitical and legal risk premium on future Chinese investment in Latin America has risen substantially. RAND analysts have further cautioned that China’s oil-backed loans give it leverage to delay any comprehensive debt restructuring, creating a further geopolitical dimension to what is already one of the most complex sovereign debt overhangs in modern history. How China exercises that leverage—whether cooperatively or obstructively—will be a bellwether for its wider posture in the hemisphere.

The Panama Canal: From Leverage to Legal Battle

No single episode better illustrates the region’s new strategic geography than the unfolding contest over the Panama Canal. Under sustained US pressure, Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison agreed in March 2025 to a $22.8 billion sale of its global ports portfolio to a BlackRock-led consortium, including its two Panama Canal terminals at Balboa and Cristóbal. Beijing condemned the deal as capitulation to “unilateral bullying” and moved to block it. By February 2026, Panama’s Supreme Court had ruled the Hutchison concessions unconstitutional, and the government formally annulled the contracts and transferred interim port operations to Maersk and MSC. CK Hutchison initiated arbitration proceedings in response, and Beijing warned Panama it would “pay a heavy price both politically and economically” unless it reversed course. The deal itself remains legally unsettled, with questions persisting about the final ownership structure of the Panama terminals and whether Chinese state-owned shipper Cosco—which sought a stake in the broader transaction—could reenter the picture. As CSIS analysts have noted, resolving the Hutchinson question is no substitute for deeper US-Panama cooperation on cybersecurity, intelligence, and governance. Removing one operator does not address the structural vulnerabilities that made the canal a flashpoint in the first place. Panama also withdrew from China’s Belt and Road Initiative following Secretary Rubio’s February visit. Though symbolically significant, this move does little to unwind the web of Chinese commercial relationships that persist across the isthmus. The canal episode has become the clearest proof of concept for the Trump administration’s assertion that Chinese control over regional chokepoints poses a direct security risk. It is also the most vivid demonstration of the collateral turbulence that asserting US primacy can generate for host governments.

Caught in the Middle: The Tariff War’s Spillover into Latin America

The US–China tariff conflict has created a distinct and underappreciated set of pressures for Latin American economies that extend beyond the simple question of which power to align with. On one side, sweeping US tariffs on Chinese goods have accelerated Beijing’s trade diversion toward the region: Latin America’s share of Chinese exports climbed to around 8% by mid-2025 as manufacturers sought alternative markets, flooding regional markets with competitively priced goodsthat undercut local producers in sectors from electric vehicles to textiles. On the other side, US tariffs have directly hit Latin American exporters: Brazil faced 50% tariffs on agricultural products at their peak, Mexico navigated a delicate balancing act to preserve its USMCA exemptions, and several smaller economies found themselves squeezed between US protectionism and the flood of Chinese goods seeking new outlets. The deeper risk for commodity-dependent economies may lie not in U.S. tariffs themselves but in how China’s domestic policy responds to those tariffs - including potential stimulus measures that shift Chinese consumption patterns or alter demand for raw materials—reverberates through Latin American export receipts. Mexico has responded by advancing legislation to impose tariffs of up to 50% on Chinese goods in sectors where bilateral deficits are widening, a move driven in part by the need to forestall US accusations that it serves as a transshipment conduit for Chinese exports entering the North American market. The cumulative effect is a region under simultaneous economic pressure from both directions, with little institutional architecture to coordinate a collective response and growing calls from policymakers to treat trade diversification as a strategic imperative rather than a commercial preference.

A Coordinated Regional Response

To counteract both economic and informational dependency, the US must adopt a regionally coordinated response. This includes:

•       Forming a regionally integrated digital market and negotiating as a bloc with tech giants

•       Developing robust data protection and AI governance frameworks

•       Prioritizing academic and technical partnerships over vendor-driven relationships

•       Mandating transparency, open data, and public audits for all major digital projects

•       Investing in digital literacy, media independence, and regional fact-checking capabilities

To strengthen Latin America’s strategic position and reduce harmful dependency, a new generation of technology policyis urgently required—one designed around the region’s social needs, economic ambitions, and sovereignty concerns. This will demand a shift in mindset among policymakers, civil society, and the private sector, moving away from fragmented or reactive approaches and toward sustained, collaborative, and innovation-driven regulation and investment. At the governmental level, coordinated national and subnational interventions should prioritize forward-looking regulations around artificial intelligence, digital infrastructure, and data governance.

Recent legislative initiatives in countries like Brazil, Chile, Peru, and Panama indicate growing recognition of the importance of ethical, risk-based frameworks. Brazil’s proposed guidelines for AI in telecommunications seek alignment with global standards, including those promoted by UNESCO and the ITU, while Peru’s new three-tier risk framework for AI sets out clear compliance and oversight responsibilities, including prohibitions on mass surveillance and predictive policing and mandatory transparency for high-risk systems. These models should be harmonized regionally to avoid regulatory fragmentation, which undermines both investment appeal and consumer protection.

Collaborative regional bodies should be created or empowered to mediate standards, facilitate regulatory sandboxes for experimentation, and share compliance resources. Only by pooling expertise and leveraging collective regulatory design can Latin America ensure tech companies face meaningful accountability and encourage the responsible growth of local innovators.

Fiscal and structural incentives are also critical. Public-private partnerships must be expanded to channel investment into frontier sectors like AI, green energy, robotics, and quantum computing. Regional innovation funds and venture capital programs backed by governments and multilateral lenders offer a way to de-risk regional entrepreneurship while preserving public oversight and avoiding the capture of strategic value by foreign interests.

Alongside financing, infrastructure must be upgraded: Shared high-performance computing facilities, such as the EU-LAC Supercomputing Network for AI launched in 2025, are a positive step, supporting cutting-edge research and public service digitization while anchoring sovereign control over cloud resources, satellite networks, and sensitive data flows. To reinforce technological sovereignty and local capacity, digital literacy and talent development must become central to public policy, with focused investments in higher education, technical institutes, and community programs targeting AI, software engineering, and cybersecurity skills.

Another linchpin for consolidating digital independence is the deepening of cross-border data governance. Rather than relying on imported or externally dictated standards, Latin America should prioritize harmonizing data protection laws and AI policies in line with international but locally adapted best practices. Lessons from the EU’s AI Act and OECD principles point to the need for risk-classified oversight, mandatory public reporting, indigenous innovation incentives, and robust human rights protections. A consistent legal approach to cross-border data flows will support regional business growth while resisting attempts by outside powers to impose client-state status.

Informational integrity is another critical frontier. Both government and civil society must work together to strengthen fact-checking, combat disinformation, and proactively invest in independent investigative media and digital literacy programs at every level. Experts highlight the complete danger posed by information warfare and narrative manipulation: if public trust erodes and digital spaces are captured, the region cannot meaningfully control its technological future. Regional frameworks for the accountability of social media platforms and digital advertising, enacted with teeth, will be essential for maintaining authentic public debate and social cohesion.

Conclusion: Reclaiming Digital Agency

At the strategic level, the US, EU, and other democratic partners must move away from zero-sum paradigms that treat Latin America as either the object of competition or the recipient of preset models. Instead, they should support regionally autonomous centers of digital innovation, research exchanges, and locally led public goods. Academic, technical, and innovation partnerships must focus on coauthored research and talent mobility, not just technology transfer contracts. The EU’s Global Gateway and the US’s Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity offer frameworks for de-risked investment, but these must be backed by meaningful market access and inclusive policymaking to compete credibly with Chinese financing.

The events of early 2026 have demonstrated, starkly, both the reach and the limits of external powers in the Western Hemisphere. China’s trade engagement continues to deepen while Beijing recalibrates toward more targeted and commercially disciplined investment. Russia’s strategic position has been gravely weakened by the loss of its most important regional ally, exposing how thin the foundations of its Latin American influence truly were. Both dynamics underscore that the region’s ability to set its own technological and political agenda ultimately depends on internal cohesion, not external patronage.

Ultimately, sovereignty in the digital era means not only securing control over infrastructure and data but also embedding transparency, equity, and accountability into the everyday operation of systems and institutions. Transparent procurement standards, open data mandates, and regular public audits for large-scale digital deployments will set the baseline for trustworthy governance. Local innovation ecosystems, especially those tied to public or community ownership, offer Latin America a route to scale homegrown solutions and escape dependence on imported platforms.

A proactive, collaborative response—moving beyond slogans and sectoral fixes—is essential. Policy design and enforcement must be guided by economic advantage and the enduring foundations of human dignity, democratic governance, and pluralistic participation. Unless Latin America succeeds in reclaiming control over data, digital standards, and innovation cycles, its societies risk surrendering their future to external algorithmic imperatives. A region with vast talent, resources, and ambition should not remain a testing ground for competing commercial or geopolitical models. Now is the moment for decisive regional coordination, investment in next-generation research and infrastructure, and the strengthening of truly independent, accountable institutions. For Latin America, the digital transition represents both a challenge and a promise that must be embraced with vision, patience, and principled resolve.

The competition for influence in Latin America is now squarely focused on who sets the technical, legal, and market rules for the region’s digital transformation. The US, EU, and local governments must decide whether to actively invest in digital sovereignty by enabling regional agency and local innovation—or risk continued dependency on external powers. As the world enters a new era of technological and geopolitical rivalry, the future of Latin America’s sovereignty will be defined by its capacity to build independent digital institutions, control critical data, and negotiate as equal partners in global tech governance. Without coordinated regional action, Latin America risks being relegated to a passive role, subject to digital colonialism and the political imperatives of dominant foreign powers.