China’s Expanding Reach
A space station shows rising clout in Latin America.
QUINTUCO, Argentina — The antenna rises from the desert like an apparition, a gleaming tower jutting 16 stories above a windwhipped stretch of Patagonia.
The device, which weighs some 410 tons, is the centerpiece of a $50 million space mission control station built by the Chinese military. The base is one of the most striking symbols of Beijing’s push to transform Latin America and shape its future for generations to come.
The station began operating in March, playing a pivotal role in China’s audacious expedition to the far side of the moon — an endeavor that Argentine officials say they support. But the way the base was negotiated and concerns that it could enhance China’s intelligence-gathering capabilities have set off a debate about the risks and benefits of being pulled into China’s orbit.
“Beijing has transformed the dynamics of the region, from the agendas of its leaders and businessmen to the structure of its economies, the content of its politics and even its security dynamics,” said R. Evan Ellis, a professor of Latin American studies at the United States Army War College.
For much of the past decade, the United States has paid little attention to the rest of the Americas. Instead, it declared a pivot toward Asia, hoping to strengthen economic, military and diplomatic ties as part of the Obama administration’s strategy to constrain China. Since taking office, the Trump administration has retreated from that approach, walking away from a free trade pact with Pacific nations, launching a global trade war and complaining about the burden of Washington’s security commitments to its closest allies.
All the while, China has been carrying out a plan of its own across Latin America. It has expanded trade, bailed out governments, built infrastructure, strengthened military ties and locked up resources. In a 2008 policy paper, Beijing argued that nations in Latin America were “at a similar stage of development” as China, with much to gain on both sides.
Leaders in the region were more than receptive. The primacy over Latin America that Washington had largely taken for granted was being challenged by a cadre of leftist presidents who governed much of the region — including Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Ecuador, Uruguay and Bolivia — and wanted a more autonomous region.
Beijing’s i nvitation came at the height of the financial crisis. Latching onto China’s appetite for the region’s oil, iron, soybeans and copper ended up shielding Latin America from the worst of the global economic damage. Then, as the
price of oil and other commodities dropped in 2011, several countries in the region found themselves on shaky ground. Once again, China came to their aid, striking deals that further cemented its role in Latin America for decades.
Even with parts of Latin America shifting to the right politically in recent years, its leaders have tailored their policies to fulfill China’s demand. Now Beijing’s dominance in much of the region is starting to come into sharp focus. “It’s a fait accompli,” said Diego Guelar, Argentina’s ambassador to China.
Trade between China and countries in Latin America and the Caribbean reached $244 billion last year, more than twice what it was a decade earlier, according to Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center. Since 2015, China has been South America’s top trading partner, eclipsing the United States. And, China has issued tens of billions of dollars in commodities- backed loans, giving it claim over a large share of the region’s oil for years.
Here in Argentina, a nation that had been shut out of international credit markets, China became a godsend for then-President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. And while it was helping, China began the secret negotiations that led to the satellite and space control station.
Experts say that the station's technology has many strategic uses. Frank A. Rose, an assistant secretary of state during the Obama administration, said American intelligence and defense officials watched with alarm as China developed sophisticated technology to jam, disrupt and destroy satellites. He said, “They are deploying these capabilities to blunt American military advantages, which are in many ways derived from space.”
Antennas and other equipment that support space missions can increase China’s intelligence-gathering capabilities, experts say. Chinese officials declined comment.
Beyond any strategic contest with the United States, some leaders in Latin America are now having doubts about their ties to China, worried that past governments have sold out their futures.
But Mr. Guelar argued that stopping engagement with China would be shortsighted, particularly at a time when Washington has given up its role as the region’s political and economic anchor.
The Argentine government was in crisis in 2009. Anger was swelling. Enter China. First, it struck a $10.2 billion currency swap deal that helped stabilize the peso, and then promised to invest $10 billion to fix the rail system. It also dispatched a team to Argentina to discuss Beijing’s ambitions in space.
China Satellite Launch and Tracking Control General, a division of the country’s armed forces, settled on this windswept 200- hectare patch in Argentina’s Neuquén Province. Flanked by mountains and far from population centers, it offered an ideal vantage point for Beijing to monitor satellites and space missions. After months of secret negotiations, Neuquén Province and the Chinese government signed a deal in November 2012, giving China the right to the land — rent free — for 50 years.
Betty Kreitman, a lawmaker in Neuquén at the time, said she was outraged that the Chinese military was being allowed to set up a base on Argentine soil. When she visited the site, she said, she walked away more concerned. “This is a window to the world,” she recalled the Chinese supervisor at the site saying. “It gave me chills. What do you do with a window to the world? Spy on reality.”
China’s policy document on Latin America in 2008 promised governments in the region to “treat each other as equals,” a clear reference to the asymmetric relationship between the United States and its neighbors in the hemisphere.
The new alliance helped propel Latin America to the kind of growth rates that Europe and the United States envied. But global commodity prices eventually tumbled. In July 2014, as several leftist leaders were presiding over distressed economies, China signaled more ambitious plans for the region.
In October 2015, China’s Defense Ministry hosted officials from 11 countries in Latin America for a 10day forum on military logistics titled “Strengthening Mutual Understanding for Win-Win Cooperation.” The meeting built on the ties China had been making with militaries in Latin America. China also organized joint training exercises and invited military officers to China.
The contacts have paved the way for China to start selling military equipment in Latin America, which had long sought American equipment, said Mr. Ellis, the War College scholar. He said the Chinese had probably pursued cooperation with Latin American nations with an eye toward any possible confrontation with the United States. “China is positioning itself in a world that is safe for the rise of China,” Mr. Ellis said.
Just weeks after the space station opened in Patagonia, the United States said that it is funding a $1.3 million emergency response center in Neuquén — the first such American project in Argentina. American officials said that the project was unrelated to the space station.
Latin America experts in the Obama White House watched China’s rise in the region warily. While President Barack Obama was widely hailed in the region for restoring diplomatic relations with Cuba in late 2014, Washington’s agenda never ceased being dominated by the war on drugs and illegal immigration.
While the Trump administration has yet to articulate a clear policy for the hemisphere, former Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson publicly cautioned that China “is using its economic statecraft to pull the region into its orbit; the question, is at what price?”
That question is being vigorously debated in some corners. Former President Rafael Correa of Ecuador was interrogated by prosecutors in February as part of an investigation into whether the decision to promise crude reserves to China harmed national interests.
In Bolivia, several industries have withered as Chinese products have become cheaper and easier to buy, said Samuel Doria Medina, a businessman who has run unsuccessfully against President Evo Morales three times. “Our financial, commercial and, ultimately, political dependency keeps growing,” he said.
And in recent months, Beijing persuaded Panama and the Dominican Republic to sever ties with Taiwan, one of China’s priorities.
Soon after being nominated as Argentina’s ambassador to China in late 2015, Mr. Guelar said, he steeled himself to renegotiate the space station agreement. The former government, he said, had given away too much, failing to specify that the base was only for peaceful purposes. “It was very serious,” he said. “At any moment it could become a military base.” To his surprise, he said, the Chinese agreed to use the base solely for civilian purposes.
But that did not assuage concerns in Bajada del Agrio, the closest town to the station. The mayor, Ricardo Fabián Esparza, said the Chinese had invited him to look at the images the antenna produces. “From that telescope, they probably can even see what underwear you’re wearing,” he said.
The United States is the one that should be most concerned, Mr. Esparza said. The base, he said, is an “eye looking toward that country.”