WASHINGTON – As the Trump administration cuts funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development and foreign aid in Latin America, China increased its diplomatic influence in the Western Hemisphere, particularly in Cuba, just 90 miles from U.S. shores.
“By suspending foreign aid and dismantling USAID, the Trump administration has weakened our national security, allowing China to apply influence within Latin America without competition,” Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-NJ) said on May 6 at a House Homeland Security Committee hearing.
China is making heavy investments in airports, seaports, and other critical infrastructure in Latin America—especially Cuba, Nicaragua, Panama, Venezuela, and Brazil. This could give China a strategic advantage in the region, which could supersede America’s influence and empower authoritarian regimes. This was reminiscent of the role the Soviet Union played for many decades, providing fossil fuels and other support to Cuba and the rest of Latin America, provoking great consternation in Washington.
“For decades, we’ve been ignoring our neighborhood and own hemisphere, so it's lost influence, absolutely, over the past 20 years,” said the Chairman of the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Transportation and Maritime Security, Rep. Carlos Giménez (R-FL).
On May 13, Beijing will host the 4th Ministerial Meeting of the China-CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) Forum, where Chinese and Latin American government officials will discuss further collaboration between the two regions. This contrasts with the lack of cooperation from the United States in Latin America, exemplified by mass deportations, hurtful tariffs, and suspension of foreign aid.
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In 2024, USAID provided $2.3 million to fund independent Cuban media in order to curb misinformation on the island, according to Reuters. Other U.S.-funded programs in Cuba included support for human rights organizations.
“China has a long-term strategy for this hemisphere built on patient investment, diplomatic cultivation, and evolving security ties,” said Leland Lazarus, associate director of National Security at Florida International University. “The U.S., by contrast, still too often operates from a crisis-to-crisis mindset in this region and has yet to provide an affirmative, long-term agenda for this region at large.”
The most worrisome Chinese investments in Cuba were detailed by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in 2023. China has four operational sites used for Signals Intelligence gathering, also called SIGINT. According to the CSIS, “SIGINT is a core element of modern spy craft. Intercepting signals transmitted by both civilian and military actors can provide countries with valuable information about their adversaries, competitors, and allies alike.”
Cuba’s proximity to the U.S. southern coastal states gives even more power to this kind of intelligence gathering. Florida, for example, hosts a myriad of military training sites that contain sensitive information.
“The Chinese Communist Party is executing a 21st-century playbook of espionage, port infrastructure, space surveillance and digital authoritarianism and Havana is the perfect laboratory for China,” said Lazarus.
China’s foothold in Cuba could also have consequences if a military conflict were to occur in the Taiwan Strait. If China tried to reclaim Taiwan and the U.S. came to the island’s aid, China would have the resources and capabilities in Latin America to potentially block or attack U.S. fleets before they reach the Indo-Pacific.
The Chinese Communist Party has already solidly implemented its technology on the island, according to the three witnesses at the subcommittee hearing. Chinese state-subsidized company Nuctech, “an advanced security and inspection solution supplier in the world” with ties to the People’s Liberation Army, operates in Cuban airports, seaports, and at customs enforcement points. Nuctech provides scanning equipment, which could mean that biometric, commercial data, or sensitive data about American supply chains could be sent back to Beijing.
Chinese technology corporations Huawei and ZTE, blacklisted in the U.S. for risks of espionage, are also extremely intertwined with Cuba’s telecommunications infrastructure. These companies helped the Cuban regime shut down online communications during the 2021 anti-government protests.
China has also made critical investments in other Latin American nations. Along with Cuba, they have joined Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, which China uses to expand its economic and diplomatic power.
For Representative Troy Carter (D-LA), the lack of U.S. development aid in Latin America “isn’t just bad policy, it was a strategic mistake that has had real consequences on national security and regional stability. In Latin America, these decisions have been nothing short of a gift for authoritarian regimes in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. By retreating from our role as a champion of democracy and development, we left a vacuum that autocrats have rushed to fill.”
In small islands of the Caribbean, for example, rising sea levels present an existential threat. China has helped build infrastructure that would limit the drastic consequences of climate change, while the new Trump administration has retracted from the Paris Accords and has placed climate change at the bottom of its priorities. China also invested tremendous amounts in solar power and electric vehicles in those islands, where fossil fuels must be imported and are very expensive. Clean energy represents another way to show China’s commitment to the Global South.
These investment projects come with conditions. The fear is that countries fall into a debt trap, as observed in some countries in Africa. “When I worked at U.S. Southern Command in Miami, the commander would say that what we’re seeing in Africa today is what we will see in Latin America and the Caribbean in five to ten years from now,” said Leland.
Furthermore, Cuba and Bolivia are now part of the BRICS group, an informal political cooperation between major global south countries—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—that aims to decentralize the global order from Western dominance. This group has emerged as a major geopolitical force, attempting to create an anti-West coalition, develop its own global currency, and create economic collaboration with the Global South.
“China’s accelerating espionage partnership with Cuba poses a major threat to U.S. and hemispheric security, bringing together Beijing’s resources and technology with Havana’s troubling capacity to penetrate U.S. agencies and security institutions,” said Andrés Martínez-Fernández, senior policy analyst for Latin America at The Heritage Foundation’s Allison Center for National Security. “The growth of China's spying footprint in Cuba is also indicative of Beijing's broader malign presence in the Americas.”
Amalia Huot-Marchand is a graduate student at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.
