China’s public response to the deportation fight between President Donald Trump and Colombian President Petro Gustavo seemed oddly muted early this week, but that might have been because Beijing already had a man in Bogota working the political angle.
Trump and Petro had a fiery, but brief exchange on the subject of deporting illegal aliens last weekend, including some artillery fire on social media from both outspoken leaders. In the end, Petro folded and agreed to keep his promise to accept planes loaded with deportees.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry flatly refused to comment on the Trump-Petro row, saying only that China would cooperate with repatriation of its own illegal migrants to the United States. That statement turned out to be somewhat disingenuous, as China has not been cooperating smoothly with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) until now.
The South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported on Tuesday that China’s envoy to Colombia, Zhu Jingyang, “seemed to take advantage” of the dispute even as his superiors at the Foreign Ministry stayed quiet.
Zhu told Bogota newspaper El Tiempo that Chinese-Colombian relations are “at their best moment” in 45 years. He described the two countries as “global cultural powers” and their differences “bring us closer and enrich us.”
The Atlantic on Monday suggested China found the rapid disintegration of relations between the U.S. and Colombia “exhilarating,” mildly faulting Petro for beginning the scuffle and posting “just plain bonkers” outbursts on social media, but then excoriating Trump for his “grossly disproportionate” response of tariff and sanction threats.
Although Trump won his showdown with Petro, the Atlantic worried that China would use the incident to woo wavering Latin American countries away from the American alliance:
The era of uncontested U.S. leadership in the region is fading fast in the rearview mirror. These days, China provides an obvious alternative to the United States in the realms of trade, finance, and technology. In fact, most of South America—including big countries such as Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Peru—now trades more with China than with the United States. If you exclude Mexico, Chinese trade now dwarfs American trade in the region.
Bloomberg News had similar concerns:
Losing a key US ally to China’s influence is a reckless move at best, foolish at worst. Historical ties to Washington have meant that Colombia has in the past approached Beijing with a greater degree of caution than many of its neighbors. South American, North American, and European companies have typically won contracts and gained market access over Chinese ones, with some exceptions.
So when Colombian President Gustavo Petro visited Beijing in 2023, elevating ties to a strategic partnership, observers saw it as a notable win for China, and part of the nation’s greater economic engagement with the region. China’s trade with Latin America — including imports of raw materials and food supplies, and exports of manufactured goods — grew to over $450 billion in 2022 from around $18 billion in 2002. The closer ties with Beijing coincided with a perceived rift between Bogotá and Washington over issues critical to the relationship, such as counter-narcotics, peace, and security.
On the other hand, ostensibly rattled countries such as Colombia should consider that China is very comfortable with using economic leverage to get what it wants and, while it has no particular fear that a tidal wave of illegal migrants from Central and South America will surge over its borders any time soon, China does not accept refugees, migrants, or asylum seekers in any great numbers.
The interesting coda to the story about Zhu in Colombia is that China’s ambassador took to social media after the Trump-Petro throwdown to say that his interview in Bogotá was recorded long before that drama erupted, and it was pure coincidence that his remarks were publicized on a timeline that seemingly linked them to deportation dispute.
“It has nothing to do with what is happening today. I don’t have the magic to guess or anticipate either,” Zhu modestly said, falling in with the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s posture of keeping a distance from the deportation issue.
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