Miriam Arce shudders as she talks about the daily explosions just yards away that have rocked her home beside the South Pacific for the last two years.
“It’s like an earthquake. It damages your psychological and physical health,” says the 54-year-old artist, whose modest house overlooks the site of a vast new port being built by Chinese state-owned company Cosco.
“It’s been twice a day since 2022. Other people feel the explosions far worse than me. What about the elderly? And babies? There’s the dust as well. It’s been torture.”
Ms Arce is one of thousands of locals in the fishing town of Chancay, an hour’s drive north of the Peruvian capital Lima, impacted by the new £2.6 billion deepwater mega-port due to be personally inaugurated by Xi Jinping, China’s president, in November and then run privately by Cosco.
They include everyone from homeowners whose houses have collapsed due to subsidence triggered by a tunnel servicing the port, reportedly the largest in South America, to local fishermen whose catches have plummeted.
Some homeowners claim their houses have collapsed due to subsidence triggered by a tunnel servicing the port – ERNESTO BENAVIDES/AFP via Getty Images
Yet locals’ grievances about the port pale into insignificance compared to its geopolitical repercussions – including the potential for Chancay to serve as a base for the Chinese navy, to project Beijing’s gathering military might across the Pacific.
In a conflict with the West, Chancay could even be used by the Chinese navy to support “operations against the west coast of the United States”, says Evan Ellis, a professor at the US Army War College Strategic Studies Institute.
Publicly, Chancay is intended for civilian purpose, further integrating the Chinese and Latin American economies by funnelling raw materials to the Asian superpower from Argentina, Colombia, and all the countries in between.
Its location will cut weeks from freight times for those commodities – including corn, soy, copper and lithium – in part by avoiding the long Atlantic detour up to the Panama Canal.
The port’s stated intention is to further integrate the Chinese and Latin American economies – Getty Images
Yet experts are warning that like all projects under the Belt and Road Initiative – the controversial programme of global infrastructure projects that is Mr Xi’s flagship foreign policy – it must by Chinese law be technically capable of also serving the People’s Liberation Army, which incorporates the Chinese navy.
Sometimes likened to the Marshall Plan – the huge aid package that Washington used to help rebuild Europe after the Second World War – the Belt and Road Initiative, worth an estimated £1 trillion, includes Chinese-financed or owned infrastructure and communications projects around the globe, from Indonesia’s first high-speed railway to a hydroelectric power project in Argentina.
But Dr Ellis warns: “If there’s an exemplar case for the use of a commercial port by the Chinese to receive and resupply Chinese navy ships in the western hemisphere during a war with the United States, or surreptitiously use a commercial port for military purposes, this is it.”
Chancay’s location even means that an exchange of military strikes between the US and mainland China would be “survivable” for Chinese warships docked there, he adds.
Chancay is typical of the “first civilian, later military” logic of hundreds of Belt and Road projects around the world, according to the Asia Pacific Policy Institute, a US think tank.
“It’s an effort to be subtle and discreet while expanding the People’s Liberation Army’s ability to project power overseas,” Danny Russel, the institute’s vice president, told The Telegraph.
The warning comes after China displaced the US as Latin America’s top trade partner, thanks in part to Belt and Road infrastructure projects.
That watershed moment happened in 2018 when Donald Trump was US president. The gap has grown while Joe Biden has been in the White House. Total trade between Latin America and China hit $351 billion in 2022, compared to $297 billion between the region and the US.
Gonzálo Ríos Polastri, Chancay’s deputy general manager, has denied the port could be used for military purposes, stressing that the contract with the Peruvian government does not even mention the Chinese navy.
“If you’re renting a car, you’re not told, ‘Please don’t use it to attack a building’,” Mr Ríos Polastri, a retired Peruvian admiral, said last year. The Chinese embassy in Lima did not respond to a request for comment.
Opaque Belt and Road contracts
Unveiled by Mr Xi in 2013, Belt and Road is intended to facilitate trade and economic ties between the Asian superpower and around 140 client countries, principally in Asia, Africa and Latin America. But there have also been Belt and Road projects in Western democracies, including Italy and Portugal.
Usually, the contracts signed are opaque or even secret, compounding Western suspicions. But they are thought to give China highly favourable terms, as well as significant control of the projects on the sovereign territory of developing nations.
Often, those contracts are alleged to have left vulnerable countries – with weak checks and balances – in a debt trap, beholden to Beijing.
In 2019, Peru’s national maritime authority initially handed Cosco “exclusive” rights to operate Chancay as the country’s first-ever private port. This year, after Cosco had already spent roughly £1 billion on construction, the government abruptly tried to reverse that decision – possibly after prodding from the US embassy – claiming it violated Peruvian law, which does not allow private ports.
But, when Cosco threatened to sue, Lima backed off and amended legislation to retroactively accommodate the deal. Overall, the saga has given the impression that the Chinese easily outwitted successive Peruvian governments distracted by chronic political turmoil.
The Chancay port is designed to funnel raw materials from Argentina to Colombia, and all countries in between, to China – Klebher Vasquez/Anadolu via Getty Images
Another notorious case is Sri Lanka’s Hambantota port. Eventually unable to pay for the construction, the island nation was forced in 2017 to hand the port to China on a 99-year lease, giving Beijing a new strategic perch in the Indian Ocean.
The growing power that Belt and Road has given Beijing comes while China strengthens its military cooperation with Russia – even as Moscow doubles down on its war of aggression in Ukraine.
Mr Xi has been careful not to give Vladimir Putin military kit that would violate Western sanctions. But he has seized the opportunity presented by Moscow’s self-imposed international marginalisation by getting advanced submarine, missile and stealth know-how from Moscow, in return for prized military intelligence.
This week, Jens Stoltenberg, the Nato secretary-general, warned that Mr Xi was a “decisive enabler” of his Russian counterpart.
Yet some experts caution against reading malign intentions, from military expansionism to bolstering fellow autocracies, into China’s growing global economic footprint.
Oscar Vidarte, an expert in international relations at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, says: “China doesn’t want competition with the US in Latin America. It’s trying to avoid conflict, and keep the relationship economic.”
“Beijing is happy to ally with democratic or authoritarian governments. What it really cares about is advancing China’s interests. It adapts to local conditions, including local politics.”
Residents near the construction site say they have had to contend with explosions twice a day since 2022 – Klebher Vasquez/Anadolu via Getty Images
Back in Chancay’s new port, where a forest of blue cranes towers over grey waves, the worries are immediate and visceral.
Luis Antonio Herrera, 42, the president of a local fisherman’s co-operative, says that previously he would typically get around 75lbs of fish in a single trip in his small boat. Now, with one particularly prolific bay filled in with the debris from a hill levelled to make way for the port, he is lucky to get 10lbs.
“What are we going to live from? They’re taking away our place of work,” he says.
Residents and fishermen have been offered compensation, but it has come with strings attached and locals view the amounts as inadequate. Hundreds have turned it down.
The Telegraph tried to contact Cosco but received no response.
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Publish date : 2024-09-23 19:05:00
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