From Addis Ababa to the Andes: How China’s African Test Run Became Its Latin America Playbook
A sequence of infrastructure, security, and political moves now unfolding across the southern hemisphere.
It was July 2007, and I was having dinner in a small Indian restaurant in Addis Ababa, the air thick with the scent of cardamom and frying onions. The owner of a local construction firm was telling me how his business, once the go-to for government road contracts, was on the verge of collapse. The reason was not a lack of skill or equipment; it was China.
Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) were suddenly winning every major tender: bidding impossibly low, arriving with their own machinery, and, by more than one quiet admission [denied by Chinese authorities] importing prisoner work crews from China. Local firms could not compete on cost or delivery speed. Within a few years, many were gone. The Ethiopian state got fresh asphalt and ribbon-cuttings; Beijing got market share, leverage, and, though few called it that at the time, a live-fire test of "development warfare" that required no troops, only contracts.
I saw at that moment the outlines of a pattern that would only grow sharper in the years ahead: it was the opening phase of a deliberate campaign to reshape Ethiopia's economic landscape, and Beijing's position within it. Nearly two decades later, I know I had witnessed the first chapter of a playbook that Beijing has since perfected. The names have changed: Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) since 2013, Global Security Initiative (GSI) since 2022; but the logic has not. Use infrastructure and finance to establish primacy; then add security cooperation, legal frameworks, and political alignment to harden those gains.
Africa is now the fully built reference model for that strategy: Latin America is where Beijing is quietly laying out the next version of the same design.
What I observed in that Addis Ababa restaurant was more than opportunistic business expansion; it was the testing ground for a comprehensive approach that Beijing has since systematized and exported. The Ethiopian model reveals a clear sequence that unfolds in three overlapping phases, across multiple tactics.
Phase 1: Economic Penetration
Begins with price suppression and financial lock-in: Chinese SOEs underbid local competitors using state-backed financing, then tie reconstruction loans to Chinese contractors and suppliers. Local businesses are displaced; governments become dependent on Chinese vendors for critical infrastructure.
Tactic 1: Price suppression + labor substitution
Ethiopia (Phase 0, pre-BRI): Chinese SOEs consistently underbid, backstopped by state banks, and substituted local wages with imported labor, including convict crews. The result was market displacement and dependency.
Likely analogue in Latin America: Similar SOE pricing in strategic transport and energy: deep-water ports, rail corridors, grid upgrades, backed by concessional credit. The displacement logic is identical; the political tolerance threshold is lower due to US proximity, but the price-and-speed advantage remains compelling.
Tactic 2: Tie-down finance
Ethiopia: Concessional or export-import lending was yoked to Chinese contractors and inputs; rapid delivery made Beijing the default provider for big-ticket public works.
Latin America: The same "finance-plus-vendor lock-in" bundle is attractive where fiscal strain meets infrastructure need. The difference is more congressional and civil society scrutiny; still, the African sequence shows that once flagship assets depend on Chinese vendors, switching costs soar.
Phase 2: Security Integration
Once economic dependency is in place, protecting Chinese investments becomes the justification for deeper involvement in host-nation security. This includes police cooperation, surveillance technology transfers, and joint law-enforcement centers. What starts as asset protection evolves into institutional security partnerships, with technology integration that reshapes governance.
Tactic 3: Project protection becomes "security cooperation"
Ethiopia (BRI → security normalization): As flagship assets accumulated (transport corridors, industrial parks) "overseas interests protection" moved from euphemism to policy. Host-nation units were tasked to guard Chinese projects; Chinese security firms proliferated; police training pipelines scaled.
Latin America: Expect police training and joint law-enforcement centers around key projects, first framed as "public safety" or "anti-theft," then as semi-permanent institutions. Africa's experience shows how security embedding follows asset density.
Tactic 4: Forum diplomacy to institutionalize the brand
Ethiopia within Africa: Beijing used the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) to mainstream GSI: officer training targets, police cooperation, branded "centers," and joint operations, transforming ad hoc security help into a program with metrics and standing agendas.
Latin America: The China–Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) Forum provides potential scaffolding to replicate FOCAC's security annexes. Early signs suggest a similar pattern: start with benign agenda items; fold in training and "best practices"; then formalize law-enforcement collaboration and technology packages.
Tactic 5: Surveillance and domestic security tech as glue
Ethiopia/Africa: As GSI matured, the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) fronted police forums, riot-control exports, and surveillance platforms, e.g., smart-city and safe-city suites. African critics warn of regime-security drift and civil liberties risks.
Latin America: The same kits attract governments managing crime, migration, and social unrest. Africa's cautionary note applies: technology choices rewire power balances between state and society.
Phase 3: Political Consolidation
Security cooperation opens the door to diplomatic concessions. Forum diplomacy normalizes these relationships, while security technology deepens dependency. The result is explicit political alignment: endorsements of Beijing's positions on Taiwan, Hong Kong, and other "core interests."
Tactic 6: Norms trade, i.e., endorsements for "core interests"
Ethiopia/Africa: As GSI spread via FOCAC, African communiqués increasingly echoed Beijing's positions on Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Xinjiang, explicitly framing them as China's "internal affairs." This was political quid pro quo baked into security cooperation.
Latin America: Expect more explicit One-China reiterations, and quiet alignments on "indivisible security" as cooperation deepens, even where leaders insist on non-alignment.
Tactic 7: From "support" to presence
Ethiopia regionally: The model tends to evolve toward routine joint operations, liaison offices, and, in some theaters, logistics nodes framed as humanitarian or anti-piracy support. Africa's broader arc shows how presence normalizes when justified by project security and multilateral mandates.
Latin America: While large People's Liberation Army (PLA) footprints are unlikely in the near term, regularized liaison and logistics for disaster relief, port "modernization," and training detachments are the plausible on-ramps.
Why Ethiopia Came First: The Strategic Logic
Ethiopia was not an accident. Beijing needed a proving ground where speed, control, and political return could be maximized, and Ethiopia offered several advantages: a government eager for rapid development; weak domestic opposition to foreign involvement; a strategic location connecting Africa to the Middle East. But the deeper reason was doctrinal.
Chinese strategy texts have long blurred the line between economic and security instruments, advocating cross-domain hybrids to achieve political effects. Unrestricted Warfare describes "combinations that transcend boundaries," fusing finance, law, media, and technology for strategic gain; precisely the cocktail piloted in Ethiopia and scaled continent-wide.
The 2020 Science of Military Strategy and Party-school texts on "Xi Jinping Thought" emphasize comprehensive national security: political (regime) security as foundation; economic security as base; science, technology, and social security as guarantee; international security as support structure. This is the exact four-pillar frame that today's GSI claims to operationalize. The 20th Party Congress report situated all of this within "great changes unseen in a century," signaling a mandate to widen China's security perimeter and protect overseas interests.
Ethiopia became the proof of concept for translating doctrine into practice. Africa's institutionalization phase (via FOCAC, training quotas, police alliances, and a Beijing-based GSI Center charged with tracking implementation) shows how abstract strategy became a management system. Ethiopia, with dense BRI assets and long-standing political ties, provided fertile ground to prove the sequence: build assets → require protection → define protection as cooperative security → formalize it in multilateral frameworks → secure political endorsements in return.
The Latin America Map: Where Each Tactic Lands
Price + labor model → Ports and energy grid bids
In Latin America, the next bids are already lining up. Panama's ports, Atlantic deep-water sites, and Southern Cone energy corridors are primed for the same undercut-and-dominate tactics that broke Ethiopia's market. Local-labor rules may slow outright labor importation; nonetheless, Africa's experience shows that vendor control, not worker nationality, is the strategic variable. Examples include Chancay megaport (Peru), Brazil/Argentina rail lines, and Huawei 5G pilots.
Finance lock-in → "Can't rip and replace"
Control the software and the hardware, and you control the future. Once Chinese vendors lock in the lifecycle of ports, power grids, and telecom systems, "diversification" becomes a political talking point, not a real option. Africa's upgrade cycles, financed by the same lenders, show how dependency compounds.
Project protection → law-enforcement partnerships
The giveaway is always the same: when protecting assets turns into building police institutions. Ethiopia's path shows exactly where those first "public safety" agreements lead. In Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), anticipate "public security" cooperation centers near flagship projects, staffed by national police and Chinese liaison or training cadres, branded under bilateral safety memorandums of understanding (MoUs), not military treaties.
Forum diplomacy → CELAC templates
Forums are not talk shops; they are templates. FOCAC gave Beijing its African security annex; CELAC is the scaffolding for the Latin version.
Norms trade → sharper One-China signals
In diplomacy, nothing is free. FOCAC shows how security cooperation comes with a price tag: public endorsements of Beijing's "core interests." LAC statements may be softer, but the Ethiopian precedent suggests that practical cooperation begets political concessions over time.
Surveillance tech → governance tilt
Surveillance arrives wearing a public-safety badge. In Africa, the result was a quiet but permanent tilt in governance; in Latin America, the same shift will follow. African analysts' warnings deserve equal airtime in LAC debates.
Presence normalization → liaison and logistics first
Bases are too obvious; logistics and liaison are not. Africa's slope began with "modernizing" ports and training maritime police, the same entry points now emerging in Latin America.
The Strategic Delta: Why LAC Will Not Be a Perfect Copy
Africa is already deep into the GSI era, with formal tracking centers, continent-wide police ties, and a steady rhythm of high-level exchanges. Latin America is still in the shallow end, but the current is moving fast. Many African states now have some form of contact with People's Republic of China (PRC) police institutions. These create momentum and brand discipline that LAC lacks, for now.
Geography also changes the counter-pressure. US scrutiny and legislative oversight in LAC can slow the security layer, even when the economic layer advances. Yet Africa's experience is instructive. Once projects accumulate, and officials prize delivery certainty, security cooperation "just happens": first for theft and vandalism; then for "stability"; finally for "counter-terrorism" or "pandemic response." The banner changes; the embedding remains.
Ethiopia, Retold: What Is Genuinely New Now
The tools are old; the codification is new. GSI turns decades of practice into a branded, exportable system with its own metrics and momentum: principles ("indivisible security," "respect for legitimate security interests"), quotas (training targets), and a forum cadence (FOCAC, CELAC) to keep the wheel turning. Africa has already endorsed the frame; Ethiopia has specific institutions such as law-enforcement cooperation centers that translate slogans into daily routines. Latin America is earlier on the curve, but the Ethiopian sequence tells us what to watch: when project protection becomes police doctrine, the system has clicked into place.
This institutionalization matters because it creates self-reinforcing momentum. Once cooperation agreements are signed, and training pipelines established, they develop their own bureaucratic logic. Officials who have invested in these relationships defend them; economic benefits become harder to unwind; security cooperation, initially justified as project protection, expands to address broader "threats" to stability.
The scope of this transformation should not be underestimated. What began as infrastructure financing in Ethiopia has evolved into a continent-spanning network of economic dependencies, security partnerships, and political alignments. The model has proven remarkably adaptable, adjusting to local conditions while maintaining its core logic of layered integration.
Latin America represents the next test of this approach. The region's proximity to the United States, stronger democratic institutions, and more developed civil society will create different constraints than Beijing faced in Africa. But the Ethiopian experience suggests that once the economic foundation is laid, the security and political layers follow with surprising speed and persistence.
The classics would approve. Sunzi prized victory by shaping, not fighting; Laozi counseled influence over force. Modern Party documents repackage this as "comprehensive national security" aligned to the "great changes of a century." Ethiopia shows the method; the Andes may show the scale.
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