China’s new gateway into South America: the Port of Chancay

China has emerged as an economic and strategic competitor of the United States in South America. As part of the Belt and Road Initiative, China has funneled $1.3 billion into the new Peruvian Port of Chancay, a deepwater facility that became fully operational in November 2024. The port will deepen the trade relationship between South America and China, the region’s largest trade partner, and will reorient Pacific shipping networks away from US port infrastructure.

It will further elevate China as not only the region’s largest trading partner, but as a powerful actor with leverage over local infrastructure and trade at a time when the US has stepped back from free trade institutions and has increasingly isolated itself from the region.

North of Lima, the Port of Chancay is the first South American port on the continent’s West Coast with the capability to receive ultra large container vessels (UCLVs). With majority ownership (60%) held by the Chinese state-owned conglomerate COSCO shipping, the port has unlocked a new major transpacific shipping channel between China and South America that bypasses the traditional deepwater ports in the US and Mexico.

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