By Eduardo Baptista, Marco Aquino and Lucinda Elliott

LIMA (Reuters) -Chinese language President Xi Jinping arrived in Lima on Thursday, kicking off a week-long diplomatic blitz in Latin America by inaugurating the large Chancay deep-water port, one in all Beijing’s most bold infrastructure investments in Latin America.

Xi will take part within the Asia-Pacific Financial Cooperation (APEC) summit in Lima earlier than heading to the Group of 20 summit in Rio de Janeiro subsequent week. Xi will even conduct state visits to Peru and Brazil, each main sources of steel ores, soybeans, and different commodities that maintain key Chinese language industries like electrical autos and pork, in addition to guaranteeing meals safety for the nation’s inhabitants of 1.4 billion.

Xi’s first order of enterprise in Lima is to headline an inauguration ceremony for the Chancay port, together with Peru’s President Dina Boluarte.

“Chancay…will revolutionize trade and dynamize the Asia-Pacific economy,” Boluarte stated in a speech on Thursday on the APEC CEO Summit.

The China-controlled megaport, constructed by Cosco Delivery Ports and positioned on Peru’s Pacific coast north of Lima, has already drawn $1.3 billion in Chinese language funding, with billions extra anticipated as Beijing and Lima look to show Chancay into a significant delivery hub between Asia and South America.

“We need to jointly build and manage well the Chancay port, make ‘from Chancay to Shanghai’ truly become a prosperous path to promoting the joint development of China-Peru, and China- Latin America,” Xi wrote in an opinion article revealed on Thursday within the official each day El Peruano.

Mario Ocharan, Peruvian director of the Chancay Chamber of Commerce instructed Reuters that the primary ship was attributable to set sail the week of November 18, transporting Peruvian fruit to China.

The true goal of the megaport in keeping with Ocharan was entry to neighboring Brazil, the place a brand new railway line will join the port to Brazilian provides.

“The Koreans and Chinese have expressed interest in building the railway” he stated.

GEOPOLITICAL AND ECONOMIC HEADWINDS

The inauguration of the port comes at a time when Beijing is trying to additional faucet into resource-rich Latin American area, amid commerce tensions with Europe and issues about future tariffs from the incoming Trump administration.

Xi is being accompanied by a delegation of over 100 Chinese language enterprise executives, together with heads of firms with the most important investments in Peru, together with Cosco Delivery and mining agency Chinalco, which owns the Toromocho mine.

Chancay, China’s largest funding in a Latin American port, has raised alarm bells in Washington. Normal Laura Richardson, former U.S. Southern Command chief, warned earlier this month earlier than retiring that Chancay may very well be utilized by the Chinese language navy’s navy and for intelligence-gathering.

U.S. anxieties about Chancay mirror a broader, decades-long shift in a area referred to as Washington’s yard that has seen China overtake america to grow to be the most important buying and selling accomplice of nations like Peru.

China’s state-backed International Occasions wrote in an editorial revealed on Monday that the port was a “bridge for practical cooperation between China and Latin America and is by no means a tool for geopolitical competition”, calling U.S. accusations of the port’s potential navy use “smears”.