The Communist Party of China declared Thursday it “strongly opposes and deplores” statements by the U.S. State Department’s Western Hemisphere Bureau lamenting a court case that could bring one of Peru’s most critical ports under control of a Party-linked corporate entity.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian, responding to a question about a Peruvian court ruling that effectively stripped the Peruvian government of control of the Port of Chancay, claimed that the State Department statement expressing concern was “disinformation.”
“China strongly opposes and deplores the U.S. false accusation and disinformation against the Chancay port,” he asserted.
The Chinese embassy in Lima and the regime propaganda outlet Global Times also disparaged the United States for warning the Peruvian government to be wary of Chinese “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI) projects. The BRI is the Communist Party’s global infrastructure program in which it offers predatory loans to poor countries to be used to pay for infrastructure projects that Beijing compromises when the target countries inevitably cannot pay.
The Port of Chancay, on Peru’s Pacific coast, is one of China’s most ambitious projects in Latin America, intended to connect China’s slave-fueled manufacturing industry to all of South America.
Genocidal dictator Xi Jinping visited Peru for the inauguration of the port in late 2024, declaring, “China is willing to work with the Peruvian side to take the Chancay project as a starting point to forge a new maritime-land corridor between China and Latin America and connect the Great Inca Trail.”
China is believed to have spent $1.3 billion on developing Chancay. The Chinese company Cosco Shipping owns about 60 percent of port equity, while the Swiss commodities firm Glencore, through a local affiliate, is believed to own the rest.
The Chancay port has for years alarmed observers of the BRI, who warned that growing influence on the Pacific coast of South America could greatly empower the Chinese Communist Party abroad.
“The risks to Peru are at multiple levels. Risk number one is the country not reaping the benefits of its abundant resources and geographic position, but rather the Chinese getting those benefits,” Evan Ellis, a professor of Latin American studies at the U.S. Army War College, told the Financial Times in 2024.
Last week, a constitutional court in Lima ruled that the government’s Supervising Body for the Investment in Public-Use Transport Infrastructure (Ositrán) could not oversee or control the Chancay Port, despite its clear significance to the Peruvian government. The judge presiding declared that Ositrán must “abstain from exercising – directly or through its associated technical organs and dependencies – its regulation, supervision, fiscalization, and sanctions faculties.” The government, the ruling continued, could impose tariffs on shipments, but had no other power over the port as it was “privately” owned by Cosco, the Chinese company. As China is a communist country, there is no such thing as a “private” corporation there in practice, a fact that the ruling reportedly did not address.
China’s President Xi Jinping delivers a speech next to Peru’s President Dina Boluarte during the virtual inauguration ceremony of the Chancay “megaport” in the small town of Chancay, 78 kilometers north of the Peruvian capital, at the government palace in Lima on November 14, 2024. (Hugo Curotto / AFP) (Photo by HUGO CUROTTO/AFP via Getty)
“Use by the public does not turn a good into public domain nor does it automatically subject it to a concessionary or full regulatory regime,” the court ruled.
The council of presidential ministers in Peru – their presidential cabinet – issued a statement on Wednesday lamenting the ruling but assuring that the government would “make use of the procedural resources that the law affords,” presumably to appeal.
The State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs addressed the situation in a message on Twitter on Wednesday, prompting the outrage in Beijing.
“Concerned about latest reports that Peru could be powerless to oversee Chancay, one of its largest ports, which is under the jurisdiction of predatory Chinese owners,” the Bureau stated. “We support Peru’s sovereign right to oversee critical infrastructure in its own territory. Let this be a cautionary tale for the region and the world: cheap Chinese money costs sovereignty.”
American Ambassador to Peru Bernie Navarro also issued a personal warning regarding the situation: “everything has a price and, in the long term, what comes cheap is expensive. There is no higher price than the loss of sovereignty.”
The Chinese Embassy in Peru railed on Friday that the United States had “openly spread false claims and defamed the Chancay Port project” with its remarks.
“The [embassy] spokesperson stressed that the friendly cooperation between China and Peru has always been based on mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit,” according to the state-run Global Times, “and emphasized that China resolutely opposes any words or actions that interfere with the sovereignty, security or development interests of other countries.”
Separately, the Global Times published an angry article on Thursday citing Chinese Communist Party “experts” lamenting that the United States would express concern about issues on its hemisphere, accusing it of seeking “hegemony.”
“By taking a specific ruling on regulatory jurisdiction and deliberately distorting it, the US is essentially presuming guilt first and then trimming facts to fit the narrative,” one such “expert” declared. The Global Times described Chancay as a “key Belt and Road cooperation project” and accused America of exposing its “hegemonic anxiety and geopolitical calculation in Latin America” by challenging the BRI.
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