Lea este artículo en español.
When you fly into Bogotá’s El Dorado airport and drive into the city center, one structure dominates the landscape before anything else: a concrete viaduct rising above crowded neighborhoods and traffic-clogged avenues, cutting south to north through the Colombian capital. Cranes still hover above it. Workers move across scaffolding in hard hats. Construction signs are written in both Spanish and Mandarin—the company building Bogotá’s first metro line is Chinese, and the trains arriving to run on it are Chinese as well.
Bogotá has debated building a metro for generations and China is helping construct it, a partnership that has brought changes that can be felt at the street level. Students are choosing to learn Chinese, new businesses are appearing in commercial districts and Chinese technology is entering university classrooms. Many Colombians, too, are increasingly looking to China and Chinese companies as a source of future economic opportunity.
Many Colombians, too, are increasingly looking to China and Chinese companies as a source of future economic opportunity.
Construction on the Bogotá Metro Line 1—the largest infrastructure project in modern Colombian history—began in 2020. The 23.9-kilometer elevated line, built by a consortium led by China Harbour Engineering Company (CHEC) and Xi’an Metro Company, will connect the city’s southwest to its center and north through 16 stations. By the end of April 2026, the project had reached 77.5 percent completion, with 10 of the system’s 30 trains already delivered from China.
China’s growing presence in Colombia is no longer an abstract geopolitical discussion. It is increasingly experienced through construction sites, wholesale markets, language classrooms, and workplaces spread across Bogotá. While the Trump administration signals a willingness to use military leverage to maintain dominant U.S. influence in the region, many Colombians view ties with Beijing through a more pragmatic lens—as an essential avenue for economic diversification, despite the mounting logistical and political hurdles.
Translation Apps, Labor Friction, and Cultural Differences
Juan, a Colombian maintenance technician, has worked on the metro project for three years alongside Chinese engineers. During a recent afternoon break near the viaduct, he pulled out his phone to show a WeChat conversation filled with Mandarin characters. He has learned to count in Chinese and memorized technical terms related to the machinery he operates.
“In China, a project like this would probably move much faster,” he said. “Here there are more protocols, safety procedures, and administrative processes. But the technology is very good.”
The collaboration, he said, is productive, though it is not without friction— communication remains one of the largest challenges. Chinese engineers often rely on translation functions inside WeChat during technical discussions, but mistranslations can create confusion and tension on site.
Juan recalled one incident that nearly escalated into a fight. He had photographed a component after being instructed to document it for a maintenance report. According to Juan, a nearby Chinese colleague interpreted the photo as evidence of a disciplinary complaint and tried to grab his phone. Translators and supervisors from both sides later resolved the dispute during a meeting at a nearby Starbucks.
“One photo,” Juan said, shaking his head. “And suddenly we had a major problem.”
He described Chinese supervisors as more direct and less conversational than many Colombian employees were accustomed to. At the same time, he also expressed admiration for the pace and intensity of some Chinese crews. Juan described seeing one engineer work nearly two consecutive days before falling asleep on a plastic sheet at the construction site.
“You could see exhaustion in his face,” he said. “That shocked many of us.”
Despite the tensions, Juan also described moments of mutual adaptation. He remembered one older Chinese supervisor—a man he referred to as a “maestro”—who patiently taught him how to operate unfamiliar systems and machinery. “He would explain things again and again until I understood,” Juan said.
Juan’s salary, meanwhile, has remained unchanged for several years despite inflation, forcing him to work weekends to compensate. Still, he continues on the project.
“I want to learn their technology,” he said. “That’s why I stay.”
Juan’s interest in learning from the Chinese is not unique. Indeed, the metro consortium has offered technical training programs for Colombian engineers to study in the city of Xi’an. A total of 49 Colombian engineers traveled to China for the program, learning about rail systems, signaling, and maintenance operations.
Yu Jun, a Chinese engineer who has spent two years in Bogotá, described the climate, the food, and the friendliness of Colombians. Asked in Mandarin about the long hours, he responded matter-of-factly: “We have to work hard to finish on time.” He also noted the difference in labor cultures plainly, without judgment: “Colombians follow their laws strictly—eight hours, then compensation. In China it is more flexible.” He added that Colombians seemed to him “more relaxed and religious, very different from China.”
Learning Mandarin, Changing Perceptions
Across Bogotá’s university district, China’s growing economic role is also reshaping educational ambitions.
At the Confucius Institute in the Universidad de Bogotá Jorge Tadeo Lozano (UTADEO), a mother named María was at the reception desk to inquire about courses for her teenage daughter Sofía. María speaks conversational Mandarin, which she learned through Chinese friends she made in Bogotá. Sofía already speaks it too—“with a better accent,” María said, laughing. They have traveled to China several times and María wants her daughter to study there eventually.
When asked whether she had considered the United States instead, María’s expression shifted briefly into something between surprise and discomfort. “No,” she said. “The U.S. is too dangerous. I don’t want my daughter in that environment.”
According to Xin Hui, a Chinese teacher who has worked in Bogotá for over a decade, no other city in the world has two Confucius Institutes this close together.
The Confucius Institute at UTADEO currently has around 500 students enrolled. Another Confucius Institute is located a few blocks away at the Universidad de los Andes; founded in 2007, it was the first in Colombia and one of the first in the region. According to Xin Hui, a Chinese teacher who has worked in Bogotá for over a decade, no other city in the world has two Confucius Institutes this close together.
Xin Hui noted that Colombians have begun coming for different reasons. “Ten years ago, students learned Chinese out of curiosity,” Xin Hui said. “Now they learn because they want to go to China—to visit, to study, to work. Before, the image of Chinese people came mostly from Hollywood movies. Now it comes from TikTok, Chinese series, and social media.”
This shift has also affected more mundane societal norms, according to Xin Hui. “The perception is different,” she said. “Ten years ago, students never really thought about whether they found Asian faces attractive. Now some come and tell me they do. The aesthetic is changing.”
Humanoid Robots and Chinese Companies
Universidad de Los Andes is also home to Aura, a Chinese humanoid robot developed by Unitree Robotics. The Unitree G1-EDU model developed by Unitree Robotics is also the first of its kind at a Colombian university. When it was unveiled in May 2025, students crowded around it, taking photos and videos, watching it walk across the auditorium floor. The engineering faculty described Aura as a research platform for artificial intelligence and human-machine interaction. The university’s president called it “a before and after” for technological education in the country.
Nearby, Samuel, a Colombian student who won a national Mandarin-language competition, now interns at Huawei in Bogotá after studying at Tianjin University in China. “If you speak Chinese, you have a major advantage,” he said. “Few Colombians speak Mandarin, but Chinese companies are growing quickly here.” He analyzes Latin American markets for one of China’s largest technology companies, working directly with executives in Beijing.
Samuel said adapting to Chinese workplace culture initially felt difficult. “At first the communication style seemed abrupt,” he explained. “But later you realize it’s just a different way of working.”
He plans to return to China next year.
San Victorino: Commerce and Adaptation
Follow the metro corridor toward Bogotá’s historic center and the city’s encounter with China becomes visible in another way.
San Victorino, one of Bogotá’s largest wholesale districts, is filled with clothing stores, electronics shops, warehouses, restaurants, and informal commerce. Chinese merchants have operated there for years, but many local residents say the community has grown larger and more economically visible.
Follow the metro corridor toward Bogotá’s historic center and the city’s encounter with China becomes visible in another way.
Inside one clothing store, Colombian security guards’ black uniforms carried embroidered red Chinese flags across the chest. Behind the register, a Chinese shop owner coordinated deliveries arriving from nearby warehouses. Her family arrived in Colombia four years ago. Today they import clothing and distribute products to cities across the country.
Cruz, a Colombian machinery merchant who has worked in the district for more than fifteen years, said reactions toward Chinese businesses have evolved. “Years ago there were protests because local merchants said Chinese products were too cheap,” he said. “Now many Colombians work with them or buy from them. People adapt.”
Cruz acknowledged that some local businesses still worry about competition from lower-cost imports, but said many merchants increasingly see cooperation with Chinese suppliers as economically necessary.
In nearby restaurants and wholesale offices, Chinese business owners described operating within the same informal and often insecure urban conditions faced by many local merchants. A businessman from Zhejiang province who represents a Chinese medical equipment company said Colombia still offered economic opportunities despite growing competition and bureaucratic difficulties.
“Here you can still make money,” he said. “But inspections, regulations, and security problems complicate things.”
Several merchants said they worried about robbery risks in central Bogotá.
The Last Day Before Going Back
Before the Chinese supervisor whom Juan called his maestro left Bogotá, Juan took him to the Museo del Oro (Gold Museum). They walked through the gold collection together—pre-Columbian objects under glass, a city outside the one the man had spent years helping to transform and had never quite found time to see. The next day, the supervisor flew back to China. Juan still talks about him. He also shows his children the photos from that afternoon, alongside the photos of the Chinese characters he is slowly learning to recognize.
The metro will remain long after many of the engineers return home. It will operate for decades. Colombian engineers training in Xi’an will eventually help run it. Students now studying Mandarin may later work in the companies connected to it.
The story unfolding across Bogotá’s streets is more complicated than either triumphalist narratives or geopolitical fears often suggest. It is being negotiated day by day through construction work, commercial exchange, technological training, language learning, and ordinary personal relationships.
Whether those transformations ultimately produce deeper partnerships or new forms of dependency—and on whose terms—remains an open question.
Some names in this article are pseudonyms used at the request of the interviewees, and some names are phonetically transliterated.
Tony Zhou (Kirby) is an independent investigative journalist and photographer based in Colombia. He has previously reported from Ukraine, the Middle East, and Africa, focusing on geopolitics, refugees, and environmental issues.