Introduction
The U.S. sanctions against the former Minister of Transport and Telecommunications of Chile Juan Carlos Muñoz for the non-transparent award of a transpacific data cable to a consortium led by China Mobile highlighted the strategic sensitivities surrounding the activities of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in Chile. Certainly, the PRC's trade position in Chile, and the influence and networks it has built there, are remarkable, even though in the overall balance, the U.S. remains a most important trading partner in investment and trade in services. The activities of the PRC include 20 billion dollars in planned infrastructure and other projects, in addition to the purchase of 39% of Chilean exports, mainly copper.
In November 2026, President Kast will travel to China to participate in the APEC Leaders' Summit, on a trip that could include a state visit with Chinese President Xi Jinping and the signing of new commitments to advance cooperation between China and Chile.
Chinese purchases of Chilean raw materials and the promise of future commercial and other benefits have generated strong incentives for some pro-American sectors of José Antonio Kast's government to protect positive relations with China. Notably, in March 2026, Chilean Foreign Minister Francis Pérez McKenna tweeted two separate but nearly identical photographs, later removed from the internet, in which he was seen shaking hands with Chinese Ambassador Niu Qingbao, and separately with U.S. Ambassador Brandon Judd, suggesting his government's desire to maintain a “balanced” relationship. However, this “balance” could arguably confuse symbolic gestures with Chile's pursuit of its sovereign national interests through an impartial and transparent application of its laws and procedures in each individual decision, based on what serves the long-term national interests. In fact, history shows that while the PRC continues to extract large volumes of copper and other strategic minerals from Chile with little added value, when the country has objectively applied its strong institutions and legal framework, the result has been numerous canceled, frozen, and problematic Chinese projects.
In his favor, Pérez McKenna, after a meeting in July 2026 with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, described the U.S. as Chile's “most important strategic partner,” although his efforts to maintain “balance” had already become a meme.
In early August 2026, the author traveled to Santiago, Chile, for a series of meetings and discussions with experts on PRC activities in Chile. This article reflects the contributions from those conversations and supporting research.
China's Influence on Chilean Raw Material Imports
The most significant trade relationship of the PRC with Chile, and its main source of influence over the country, is undoubtedly the purchase of the nation's mining and agricultural products. In 2025, the PRC purchased approximately 52% of Chilean copper through the Chilean state-owned company CODELCO, in addition to approximately 67% of its lithium. In the agricultural sector, approximately 87% of Chilean cherries are destined for the Chinese market. The PRC is also the destination of 10% of Chilean wine exports.
As noted earlier, Chile’s dependence on the PRC to absorb such a substantial portion of its exports is undoubtedly a key factor in its desire to avoid actions that overly provoke the PRC, even as José Antonio Kast's pro-Washington government seeks to court the United States.
China's Advance in Chile's Digital, Electrical, and Electric Vehicle Sectors
Beyond the purchases of Chilean raw materials and agricultural products, the sectors in which Chinese companies have progressed most successfully in the country are undoubtedly electrical connectivity, electric vehicles, and digital infrastructure.
In the electrical sector, through a series of acquisitions made over the past decade, Chinese companies have come to control a significant part of the country’s electrical infrastructure. The acquisition by China State Grid of CGE and Chilquinta gives it control over 57% of distribution in Chile. This is complemented by the acquisition by China Southern Power Industrial Corporation (SPIC) of a 27% stake in Transelec Chile.
Chinese automakers, led by BYD, account for more than ¾ of battery electric vehicles sold in Chile, and 50% of the Chilean hybrid electric vehicle market. In public transport, the Chilean capital, Santiago, currently boasts more Chinese electric buses than any city outside the PRC. The Chilean city of Copiapó has the distinction of having a public transport fleet composed entirely of electric buses supplied by the PRC.
In the digital sector, although firm U.S. opposition managed to halt the “China-Chile Express Cable” led by China Mobile, Chinese companies Huawei, ZTE, Honor, Oppo, and Xiaomi dominate the smartphone and other equipment market in Chile, and are marketed by practically all the major telecommunications operators in the country: Movistar, Entel, Claro, and WOM. Huawei has three data centers in the country.
Chinese companies have also made significant advances in the construction sector in Chile, including the building of five hospitals in the regions of O’Higgins and Maule. Chinese companies have also worked on Lines 6 and 7 of the Santiago Metro, the $470 million light rail project between Santiago and Batuco, and on two stretches of the Route 5 of Chile. Still, as discussed further on, Chinese companies have faced issues in a significant portion of these projects.
The PRC’s Networks in Government, Business, Military, Space, and Academia
The most important networks that the PRC has cultivated in Chile are undoubtedly those it maintains with government and business elites seeking commercial or other benefits from the relationship. Some of the most public manifestations include the friendship group with the PRC of 40 members in the Chilean Congress, led by Communist Party deputy Karol Cariola. China seems particularly interested in strengthening ties with Kast's Republican Party, despite ideological differences. In March 2026, just days before the swearing-in of President Kast, a five-person delegation from that party traveled to the PRC led by the party's Secretary General, Ruth Hurtado.
In the business realm, the PRC's network includes the small but well-connected Chilean-Chinese Chamber of Industry and Technology (CHICIT), led by Juan Esteban Musalem Arach. It also extends to the activities that Chile's leading business association, SOFOFA, undertakes with the Chinese ambassador and other PRC figures.
In the media, the PRC's networks include Fabián Pizarro from Radio Cooperativa and his program “The China Effect,” funded by China Media Group. They also include the trip of 19 Chilean journalists...s, mostly leftist-oriented, in June-July 2026 to a program in Beijing, Nanjing, and Wuxi, China, among them Juan Espinoza from Radio ADN, Catalina Araya and Felipe Ramírez from Radio Universidad de Chile, Hugo Guzmán Rambaldi and Úrsula Fuentes Rivera from El Siglo, and Matías Rojas from El Ciudadano, among others.
In military matters, the current government seems to have halted, for now, the numerous engagements with China made by its predecessor. The leftist former Minister of Defense of Chile, Maya Fernández, traveled to the PRC in September 2024 to reactivate a military cooperation agreement from 2013, in addition to expanding defense exchanges. Chinese defense companies CATIC, NORINCO, CETC, and China Aerospace Planning and Design Group were also present at the emblematic Chilean military fair FIDAE, and a delegation from the Chinese government attended the Chilean naval exhibition Exponaval, in December 2024. In June 2025, the Chilean training ship Esmeralda visited the PRC.
Perhaps the most dramatic symbol of the previous Boric government's receptive stance towards military engagement with China, and the change with the new Kast government, was the visit to Chile of the hospital ship Silk Road Ark of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy. While the Boric government was leaving power, the PLA Navy ship docked in two Chilean ports, where it had some contact with Chilean military authorities, but abandoned Chilean waters on March 8, just three days before President Kast's inauguration.
Unlike the last FIDAE held under the Boric government, in the most recent edition, held in April 2026, barely a month after President Kast's inauguration, no major Chinese defense company was present. In fact, the PRC was represented by a single Unitree robot, presented as a scientific collaboration project from the Catholic University of the Most Holy Conception (UCSC) of Chile. In a sense, however, Chile's prolonged use of American defense systems has never made it practical to shift to Chinese equipment in terms of training, maintenance, or doctrine, much less considering the impact it would have on Chile's defense relationship with the U.S.
The Kast government also seems to have ended the practice of its predecessors in sending Chileans to PLA military institutions for training or receiving PLA military delegations in Chile.
During the celebrations of the National Day of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) of China, held at Chinese embassies and other sites around the world, Chile limited its participation to two Deputy Ministers of Defense.
Still, some security ties between China and Chile persist under the Kast government, including a group of Chilean military attaches in Beijing that includes a representative from the Chilean investigative police, the PDI. Conversely, the PRC maintains two police officers at its embassy in Santiago.
In the space sector, in April 2025 the previous Chilean government of Gabriel Boric halted the PRC's work to build an observatory in the Atacama Desert, in Ventarrones, which would have had the capacity to track U.S. satellites. Nevertheless, the PRC has maintained networks of collaboration with Chilean space scientists since the establishment in 2013 of the China-Chile Joint Astronomy Center (CCJCA) at the National Astronomical Observatory (NAOC) in Beijing, as well as Chile's inclusion in the South American Astronomy Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CASSACA). Nowadays, these institutions maintain constant space collaboration with Chilean scientists from the University of Chile, Diego Portales University, Catholic University (including the Universidad Católica del Norte, which qualifies CASSACA from China as a “strategic partner”), as well as the Federico Santa María Technical University, among others. Public collaborations include the establishment of an astronomical data center with the participation of China's Huawei and USM, a 2020 project on black holes and protoplanetary disks with scientists from Diego Portales University Claudio Ricci and Lucas Ceriza. The collaboration also included a presentation in January 2026 at the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory by the University of Chile scientist Marcos Díaz Quejada.
In the name of maritime scientific collaboration, during the outgoing Boric administration, the Chinese research vessel Tan Suo Yi Hao entered Chilean waters from January to March 2026, officially to conduct deep-sea mapping, raising concerns that the mapping in the area by the ship could have military applications for Chinese submarines in a future war. The Millennium Oceanography Institute (IMO) of the University of Concepción, an academic partner of China, had unquestioningly accepted the suspiciously generous offer from the PRC to provide a Chinese research vessel dedicated entirely to the mission, even though the official scientific purpose mainly benefited the IMO. Further raising suspicions, the Tan Suo Yi Hao was accompanied by the Chinese military ship Silk Road Ark when both set sail back to China, just days before President Kast's inauguration.
As in other parts of the region, the Confucius Institutes in Chile are a key vehicle for connecting those interested in the PRC, its language, and culture, with representatives of the Chinese government. Chile has 17 of these centers across the country, including 14 associated with campuses of Universidad Santo Tomás. The main campus of the latter also houses CRICAL, the regional headquarters for all Confucius Institutes of the PRC in Spanish-speaking Latin America.
Beyond the centers sponsored by the PRC government, several prestigious Chilean universities maintain programs focused on China, including the University of Chile, Catholic University, and University of Santiago (USACH). One of the main networks connecting China-specialized academics from these institutions with individuals from the PRC embassy and Chinese institutions like the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences is the Núcleo Milenio ICLAC.
The PRC is also very active in its outreach to Chileans at the local level. Publicly documented visits by local officials in recent times focus on sister city relations, such as that between Hefei and Santiago, in the donation of security systems, or in promoting investments.
In 2021, a delegation from the municipality of La Reina received a donation of security cameras from Dahua for a local preparatory school in Temuco, Insuco. Students from schools in Biobio and La Araucanía traveled to Shenzhen to participate in a Huawei ICT competition. Marcelino Carvajal, governor of Mejillones, home to the strategic Angamos port, has received Chinese ambassador Niu on multiple occasions.
The agreement betweenChina and Chile to mutually eliminate the visa requirement for the transfer of nationals from one country to another has also expanded the work of the PRC with specific locations to receive Chinese tourists in them.
China's problematic projects in Chile
In the context of Chile's strong trade relationship and interpersonal networks with China, the number of projects by PRC entities that have faced problems in Chile is notable.
Although the PRC has long purchased a significant portion of copper and other minerals from Chile through CODELCO, no major mining investment proposed by the PRC has prospered in the country.
A highly publicized investment from 2008 by the Chinese company Tongling Non-Ferrous Metals, presented as possibly close to 1 billion dollars, collapsed when Chilean copper prices fell. An even larger project, from 2009, for iron ore by Shunde Rixin, possibly for up to 2.2 billion dollars, similarly collapsed.
More recently, the Chinese automaker BYD abandoned plans to build a 290 million dollar plant for processing Chilean lithium, and the Chilean regulatory body CORFO ended up canceling BYD’s license for lithium-related activities in the country in 2026.
Also in the lithium sector, the Chinese company Tianqi sold part of its stake in the consortium Sociedad Química y Minera (SQM), as a show of its displeasure when the latter took advantage of Tianqi’s exclusion from SQM's board, previously negotiated, to agree on a change in the corporate structure, partnering with the Chilean state mining company CODELCO despite Tianqi’s protests.
In the construction sector, the Chilean government withdrew China Railway Road Corporation (CRRC) from its concession to build Line 7 of the Santiago Metro after the tunneling machine from the latter broke down, causing a seven-month delay in the project that the Chinese did not act with the required urgency to resolve.
CRRC also incurred significant delays in starting the second phase of 804 million dollars of the works on Route 5 central of Chile, which led to a legal dispute with CRRC, which claims 140 million dollars in damages for delays and changes in project requirements that it attributes to the Chilean government.
In port matters, although the Chinese consortiums that included CRRC and China Harbour Engineering Corporation (CHEC) were well positioned to win a public tender for a new deep-water port in San Antonio, in July 2026, the Chilean government decided to restructure the project, canceling the ongoing tender and effectively preventing a Chinese company from being awarded the project.
In the space sector, the aforementioned cancellation of the radio telescope project in Ventarrones was partly due to the PRC entity not obtaining the permit from the Chilean state, presuming instead that the support of its Chilean academic partners, the Universidad Católica del Norte, was sufficient to carry out the project, despite its national strategic implications.
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