The Red Thread Tightens

China weaves Colombia into its Belt and Road web, nudging Latin America further from Washington’s grasp.

Beijing’s courtship of Bogotá marks another stitch in its grand design for a multipolar world as Colombia becomes the latest Latin American country to join China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a sprawling vision launched by Xi Jinping in 2013 to position Beijing as the nerve centre of 21st-century infrastructure, trade and digital connectivity. The embrace is economic, but the message is unmistakably geopolitical: the Monroe Doctrine is past its expiry date.

President Gustavo Petro’s decision to align Colombia with the BRI was long in the making. But its timing is telling. Washington, once the uncontested arbiter of hemispheric affairs, has grown increasingly wary of China’s expanding footprint in its backyard. For years, it has leaned on partners like Panama to abandon Beijing’s orbit, with some success. Yet now, the entry of Colombia, a staunch American ally in past decades, signals a shifting tide.

At the signing ceremony in Beijing, President Xi spoke in the lofty rhetoric of anti-imperial solidarity. Petro, in turn, spoke of ending Colombia’s $14 billion trade deficit with China and transforming his country into a strategic AI and interoceanic data hub linking Asia and Europe. The language was utopian. The motives are anything but.

Trade between China and Latin America surpassed $500 billion last year. As Washington remains mired in internal political dysfunction and selective protectionism (its latest universal 10 percent tariff on most imports being a case in point), Latin America is seeking partners that offer money with fewer moral lectures. For Beijing, the BRI is a geopolitical scalpel disguised as a cheque book. For leaders like Petro, who fancy themselves as voices of the Global South, it offers infrastructure, capital and symbolic autonomy from American tutelage.

Obviously, the BRI has its critics. In Africa and parts of Asia, it has been accused of engineering debt traps, tilting contracts in favour of Chinese firms, and fostering corruption among local elites. But it has also delivered tangible gains: roads, ports, railways and digital backbones in places where Western lenders often dither or attach strings too steep. In Latin America, China has funded hydropower projects in Ecuador, railways in Argentina, and lithium extraction in Bolivia. Now it wants fibre-optic routes through the Andes, ports along the Caribbean, and digital sovereignty for the nations that host its servers.

Colombia’s role in this architecture is not minor. It straddles two oceans, abuts the Panama Canal, and harbours ambitions of becoming a logistics and technology hub for the continent. Petro’s vision of turning Colombia into a nexus for undersea cables connecting China and Europe is less fanciful than it sounds. In a world increasingly driven by data, such nodes are worth more than oil pipelines.

Latin America is becoming the latest arena in the slow-burning geopolitical contest between the United States and China. For decades, Washington’s influence in the region was cemented through trade deals, aid programmes and military cooperation. Colombia, in particular, was long a poster child for US security diplomacy, receiving billions in aid under Plan Colombia to combat narcotraffickers and Marxist rebels. But Petro, a former guerrilla himself, represents a break from that legacy.

The symbolism of Colombia’s accession to the BRI should not be overstated, but neither should it be dismissed. It reflects a broader reality which is that America’s dominance in Latin America is no longer assumed. Where Washington offers conditionality, Beijing promises partnership. Where the United States frets about ideological alignment, China focuses on pipelines and ports.

Some, like Panama, have backed out under pressure. But Colombia is not Panama. Its weight, location, and economic ambitions make it a more consequential addition to China’s vision of a ‘multipolar world.’ Washington will need more than warnings and tariffs to compete.

If America wants to hold its sway in the region, it must offer an alternative rooted not just in fear of China, but in genuine economic engagement.