For decades, an unwritten rule has guided Colombian foreign policy: Respice Polum, look to the North. That instinct kept Bogotá tightly bound to Washington’s strategic, military, and financial orbit, from the billions poured into the counternarcotics initiative Plan Colombia to the country’s reputation as the United States’ most reliable partner in South America.
In recent years, however, that baseline has been tested. China’s economic influence has finally reached even this cautious corner of the continent. From the deep-water port of Chancay in Peru to energy grids across Chile, Chinese investment has spread across the region in the form of critical infrastructure: ports, telecommunications, and power lines. This is no longer just trade; it is a structural footprint that redefines how the region connects to the global economy.
Nowhere is this shift more consequential than in Colombia, a long-standing cornerstone of U.S. regional strategy. While left-wing President Gustavo Petro pursued closer relations with Beijing, the growing role of Chinese capital in the country has been remarkably steady since the early 2010s—a crucial development as Colombia prepares for the far-right administration of president-elect Abelardo de la Espriella this August.
As Chinese investment continues expanding, the Colombian case offers a vital entry point into a dilemma reshaping the entire hemisphere: how to utilize these new partnerships to foster domestic development without merely exchanging one form of dependency for another.
This balancing act becomes increasingly difficult as Washington shifts its strategic focus in Latin America, now viewing trade, investment, and infrastructure primarily as matters of national defense. For Colombia’s incoming conservative government, the longstanding ability to maintain a close security partnership with the United States while deepening economic ties with China may no longer be sustainable. Navigating between the hemisphere’s two competing powers is likely to become one of the defining foreign policy challenges of the years ahead.
A Relationship 46 Years in the Making
Colombia and China established diplomatic relations in 1980, but for much of the following four decades their engagement developed unevenly. As trade steadily expanded—with China becoming Colombia’s second-largest trading partner by 2018—political, diplomatic, and cultural ties lagged behind. Bogotá remained firmly anchored within the United States’ security and strategic orbit, while Beijing occupied a growing but largely economic role. As Pío García Parra, a professor and China scholar at the Universidad Externado, observed, the relationship “had largely developed by inertia” and remained centered on trade, while its political, diplomatic, and cultural dimensions were far less developed.
That inertia began to shift under Gustavo Petro—not because Colombia suddenly woke up to China’s importance, but because Petro pursued ties more deliberately than his his predecessors.
International relations professor Eduardo Pastrana Buelvas of Universidad Javeriana argues that this basic pattern has not fundamentally changed. Despite growing Chinese investment in infrastructure, he contends that the relationship remained largely commercial rather than strategic. Colombia, he argues, has never developed a diplomatic corps specializing in Chinese politics, history, or culture, and still lacks homegrown sinologists capable of informing long-term policy.
That inertia began to shift under Gustavo Petro—not because Colombia suddenly woke up to China’s importance, but because Petro pursued ties more deliberately than his his predecessors. He traveled twice to Beijing, elevated Colombia’s participation in the China-CELAC Forum—the primary multilateral platform through which Beijing coordinates its engagement with Latin America and the Caribbean—to the ministerial level, and appointed Sergio Cabrera, a filmmaker who lived and worked in China, as ambassador. Last year, Petro also signed a memorandum of understanding bringing Colombia into China’s Belt and Road Initiative, becoming one of more than 20 Latin American countries to do so.
None of this makes Colombia exceptional. As Parsifal D’Sola Alvarado, executive director of the Andrés Bello Foundation-China Latin America Research Center, observed, Chinese engagement with Colombia has been growing as a reflection of broad market realities rather than something unique to this specific government. On a regional scale, Colombia is actually behind: countries like Panama, Peru, Chile, and Venezuela have hosted far more Chinese capital and infrastructure projects.
D’Sola Alvarado points out that these pushes respond to a severe, pre-existing deficit in domestic infrastructure development. “Domestic necessities drive engagement with China,” he stated. However, D’Sola Alvarado argues that the era of massive Chinese-backed infrastructure megaprojects is beginning to fade. He attributes this shift to a combination of changing domestic priorities in China, reduced appetite for high-risk investments, and lessons learned from troubled projects in countries such as Venezuela, Ecuador, Argentina, and Brazil.
More broadly, recent Chinese investment in Latin America has increasingly emphasized commercially driven sectors such as renewable energy, electric mobility, and technology.
Washington’s Red Lines
China’s growing commercial presence is also marked by a deep structural imbalance. It has overtaken the United States as Colombia’s largest source of imports, leaving Bogotá with a widening trade deficit as commodity exports struggle to offset manufacturing inflows. Yet this expanding economic relationship continues to exist under the shadow of a Trump administration that frames China’s growing role as a security threat to the United States.
As scholar García Parra argues, Washington views Colombia as one of its most strategically important allies in the Western Hemisphere. Its dual-ocean access and position at the northern gateway to South America have long led U.S. policymakers to limit foreign strategic involvement in the country, leaving Colombia with less room than its neighbors to pursue an autonomous relationship with China. Consequently, Washington draws a clear distinction between ordinary commerce and activities with potential security implications: Chinese participation in ports, telecommunications, and 5G networks attracts far greater scrutiny than conventional projects such as highways, tunnels, or urban rail systems.
This defensive landscape helps explain why Colombia’s 2025 entry into the Belt and Road Initiative remains, at least for now, more symbolic than substantive. García Parra argues that Colombia’s accession is primarily “a political gesture of recognition” by the current administration of China’s importance in the international order. In political terms, the move also aligns with Petro’s broader vision of a more multipolar world. But because the agreement is a memorandum of understanding rather than a binding treaty, García Parra notes, it is not yet backed by concrete commitments or implementation, leaving its long-term significance dependent on whether future governments translate it into lasting policies and projects.
The Struggle for Autonomy
Colombia’s diplomatic posture toward China has historically shifted with changes in presidential administrations rather than following a consistent long-term state strategy. According to Pastrana Buelvas, the administration of Juan Manuel Santos marked an important turning point by adapting to an increasingly multipolar international order and seeking closer relations with China. Although the two governments agreed to undertake exploratory feasibility studies for a bilateral free trade agreement, the process never advanced to formal negotiations. Pastrana Buelvas attributes this to resistance from domestic agricultural and business sectors, as well as the administration’s decision to prioritize the 2016 peace agreement. His successor, Iván Duque, did not pursue the same agenda toward China, a decision Pastrana Buelvas attributes in part to internal pressures within Duque’s party.
When asked whether Colombia can sustain genuine strategic autonomy between the United States and China, García Parra did not hesitate. ‘It cannot. It cannot,’ he replied.
President Petro again shifted course, seeking to deepen relations with China. Yet even Petro, Pastrana Buelvas noted, has expressed reservations about China’s concentration in the mining and energy sectors and its growing role as a source of credit, even as he has sought to diversify and rebalance Colombia’s relationship with the United States.
But these diplomatic maneuvers quickly run into structural realities. When asked whether Colombia can sustain genuine strategic autonomy between the United States and China, García Parra did not hesitate. “It cannot. It cannot,” he replied. Colombia’s strategic geography, its central role in U.S. counternarcotics policy, and Washington’s longstanding influence over key security issues leave little room for complete autonomy in its foreign policy. While there is space to expand economic cooperation with China, García Parra argued, strategically sensitive sectors—including digital infrastructure and other critical technologies—face much stricter limits. He also emphasized that China has neither a military nor a security presence in Colombia, rejecting claims that Beijing is secretly undermining U.S. interests in the country.
Still, García Parra cautioned against viewing engagement with China as an exclusive alignment. “China is an opportunity,” he said, arguing that closer ties with Beijing expand Colombia’s commercial options without precluding cooperation with the United States or other partners. In his view, Colombia’s long-term interest lies not in replacing one partner with another, but in diversifying its international relationships.
What Comes After August
Colombia’s foreign policy is poised for another realignment. Abelardo de la Espriella, a right-wing populist attorney and political outsider, won a razor-thin runoff election on June 21 and is set to take office on August 7. His campaign centered on restoring internal security and pursuing an unequivocal realignment with Washington—a shift already signaled by early diplomatic overtures to allies such as Israel.
What this implies for relations with China is a widening gap between political signaling at the top and continuity in underlying economic relationship. At the bilateral level—official visits, ministerial exchanges, and broader diplomatic engagement—García Parra expects a clear slowdown under an incoming administration more closely aligned with Washington. “The intergovernmental level will slow down,” he said, predicting that bilateral engagement will become more cautious and less frequent. While this shift reflects changing political priorities, it does not eliminate the structural foundations of cooperation that already exist between Colombia and China.
At the same time, García Parra argues that the private and commercial dimensions of the relationship are far more resilient. “The private level will undergo very few changes,” he said, pointing to the continued presence of Chinese firms in Colombia and Colombian exporters’ continued pursuit of Asian markets. He also underscored China’s pragmatic approach to political change in the region, citing Argentina as an example: “The Argentine government came in saying many things against China, but China did not take any measures. China later invited President Javier Milei to beijing, he noted, “and trade continues.” In this sense, García Parra argued, economic ties tend to outlast ideological shifts in government.
Yet continuity in commercial ties does not guarantee continuity in how those projects are governed. Rebecca Ray, a senior researcher at the Boston University Global Development Policy Center, argues that the incoming administration could reshape the regulatory environment for Chinese investment. Drawing on more than a decade of research, she finds that Chinese firms and lenders generally adapt to the standards set by host governments: when environmental and social rules are strong and consistently enforced, companies tend to improve their practices; when governments weaken those standards, firms often adjust to the lower bar. Because many Chinese investors are still relatively new to Colombia’s decentralized and conflict-affected regions, Ray notes that they rely heavily on clear guidance from national authorities on environmental regulation, land rights, and community engagement.
The Permanent Tightrope
Colombia’s relationship with China is unlikely to end with a clean geopolitical realignment. While the incoming administration has signaled its intention to restore closer political ties with Washington, the commercial forces drawing firms into Colombia—evident in projects such as the Bogotá Metro Line 1, the Regiotram de Occidente commuter rail, and massive solar energy infrastructures like the Tepuy Photovoltaic Project—are unlikely to disappear with a change of government. Colombia’s security architecture remains deeply anchored to the United States, while its economic partnerships have become increasingly diversified.
The challenge, however, is no longer the same as it was a decade ago. As Washington increasingly views Chinese commercial engagement through the lens of strategic competition, Colombia’s ability to separate economic cooperation from geopolitical alignment may steadily narrow. What was once largely understood as a question of economic diversification is now increasingly interpreted through the lens of national security and great-power rivalry.
For the administration of de la Espriella, the central dilemma will therefore not be choosing between Washington and Beijing, but managing a relationship with both in an international environment where the boundary between economics and geopolitics has become increasingly blurred. Whether Colombia can preserve that room for maneuver—or whether intensifying U.S.-China competition closes it—will be one of the defining questions of Colombian foreign policy in the years ahead.
Tony Zhou (Kirby) is an independent journalist based in Colombia. His work focuses on geopolitics, forced migration and environmental crises, with previous reporting from Ukraine, the Middle East, and Africa.