China’s green strategy redefines Latin America’s global dev. role

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: The Global Times
Today 11:28

China’s renewable energy partnerships in Latin America are transforming the region from a Western-defined “resource exporter” into an active player in global green development

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Wind turbines operate in Lagoa, Brazil, March 14, 2024. (AP)

China’s expanding renewable energy investments across Latin America are reshaping the region’s economic and geopolitical landscape, offering an alternative development path to the Western model that long treated Latin America as a “resource appendage,” according to Global Times.

For decades, Western narratives have depicted Latin America as a “backyard” of raw materials and debt dependency, an exporter of commodities serving Western industrial needs, the Beijing-based tabloid wrote. But that perception is shifting: Across the continent, Chinese green projects are now visible symbols of a new order in formation.

In Santiago, over 2,000 Chinese-made electric buses now power Chile’s public transport system. On Argentina’s Andean plateau, 1.2 million solar panels at the Cauchari photovoltaic power station generate clean energy. In northeastern Brazil, wind farms built and operated by China’s Goldwind supply power to millions of households.

As Global Times notes, these are not just isolated engineering ventures, but part of a larger “redistribution of geopolitical power driven by green energy,” signaling China’s evolution from “the world’s factory” to a “global green engine.”

A strategic partnership beyond extraction

According to the Global Times, unlike Western powers that historically extracted raw materials while keeping industrial value chains abroad, China’s approach integrates Latin America into its green industrial ecosystem. Through financing, infrastructure development, and technology transfer, Beijing is embedding the region within a broader green value chain that enables manufacturing, industrial upgrading, and local value creation.

Global Times described this shift as a “forward-deployed strategy,” positioning China not as a passive consumer of Latin America’s resources, but as a co-architect of sustainable industrial growth across the Global South.

A contrast to Western “Green Colonialism”

China’s approach also departs from what the Chinese outlet termed Western “green colonialism”, the imposition of environmental standards and emission targets on developing nations without offering equitable industrial participation.

While Western rhetoric emphasizes carbon reduction, China frames its cooperation around “development through green transition,” aligning renewable projects with local job creation, industrial capacity, and national development goals.

This framing, according to Global Times, resonates strongly across Latin America, where countries seek tangible economic returns rather than abstract environmental commitments. By investing in industrial parks, training programs, and low-cost financing, China is helping Latin American nations move from being resource suppliers to “green manufacturers” and “value creators.”

China’s renewable energy footprint now represents more than economic expansion, challenging the West’s monopoly over industrial supply chains and global narrative control. Global Times emphasized that as Latin American nations gain strategic agency through Chinese partnerships, Western “green sermons” appear increasingly disconnected from regional realities.