By Juan Camilo Escorcia | 2023-07-28

CARACAS –- China recently signed a new space cooperation agreement with Venezuela, giving Beijing access to the country's "satellite control ground stations".

The deal represents the latest in a series of moves by China to expand its military presence in Latin America.

The Bolivarian Agency for Space Activities of Venezuela (ABAE) and the Chinese National Space Administration (CNSA) signed a space cooperation agreement on July 17.

Venezuelan Minister of Science and Technology Gabriela Jiménez posted on Twitter that Venezuela is the "first country in the American continent to join" the International Lunar Research Station (ISIL) project, led by China and Russia.

"Venezuela and China's strategic partnership spans all areas of cooperation," Jiménez said.

In 2019, China signed a similar agreement with Argentina, and in 2021, it signed an agreement with Brazil.

China, under President Xi Jinping, has made significant progress in Latin America, developing seaports and space bases to strengthen relations with allied countries and undermine alliances with Western institutions.

"The Biden administration has warned about the latent risk of China's growing influence in Latin America," said Marcela Prieto, vice president of Institutional Relations at Visión Américas, a Washington, DC-based consulting firm.

According to Prieto, after The Wall Street Journal's report on June 8 that China and Cuba had reached an agreement for Beijing to establish an electronic espionage base on the island 160km from Miami, it became clear that China's infrastructure development in Latin America is part of an interconnected scaffolding for military and espionage purposes, not just for commercial ones.

"Chinese infrastructure projects in Latin America, such as naval ports and space bases, could be used for the purpose of telecommunications interception, similar to the base in Cuba," Prieto told Entorno.

The Chinese electronic espionage base in Bejucal, Cuba, is clearly intended to spy on US communications. However, the purpose of other Chinese projects in Latin America, such as the recently signed agreement with Venezuela, is less clear.

On the surface, the agreements appear to be for commercial cooperation, such as the construction of seaports, or for space research, such as the development of space bases.

However, Beijing's formula for expanding its influence in Latin America blurs the lines between civilian and military. Most of the agreements signed are with state-owned Chinese companies controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), as well as other organizations that appear to be civilian in nature, such as the CNSA.

But these organizations are often overshadowed by the People's Liberation Army (PLA).

Geopolitical space

The Washington Post in April published leaked reports from the US military that China and Nicaragua were holding secret negotiations to build a deep-water port in Nicaragua that could be used for military purposes.

The China Harbor Engineering Co., a state-owned engineering company based in China, is leading the seaport project in Nicaragua. The company has been negotiating with the Daniel Ortega regime since 2022 to secure the contract for the project.

Spanish journalist Juan Pablo Cardenal wrote in a February 13 column on the website of Cadal, an Argentine organization that monitors human rights in autocratic countries, "Beijing and its regional allies often use the wild card of 'civilian use' to neutralize criticism and uncertainty."

"In democratic political cultures, there is a clear distinction between the civil and military spheres. However, in China, this division does not exist," he wrote.

As a result, "nothing that is strategic is considered to be civilian or outside the reach of the government," he added.

Cardenal also cited the port of Chancay, Peru, as an example of a "dual-use" facility that could be used for both civilian and military purposes.

The port will be managed by the state-owned China Ocean Shipping Co. (Cosco), which is considered to be the "hard core" of the Chinese regime. This means that Cosco is closely aligned with the CCP and is likely to obey its orders.

An article published by the Argentine newspaper La Nación in June, based on research by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, DC, identified at least 10 potential naval bases that China could use in Latin America.

These bases include Ensenada (Mexico), Cristóbal and Balboa (Panama), Chancay (Peru), Paraguaná (Brazil) and Río Grande (Argentina).

"These facilities make up one segment of a global network of ground stations that maintain communications with satellites as they pass over different geographic regions along their orbit. Their proximity to the United States has heightened fears that they can be used to spy on U.S. assets and intercept sensitive information," CSIS said in a report titled "Eyes on the Skies. China's Growing Space Footprint in South America," published last October.

Haunting base

Beijing's initiative to dominate near-Earth space with the support of Latin America and the Caribbean is not new. For two decades, the relationship between the two regions has evolved beyond its mainly extractive nature to include a growing focus on space and digital technology.

The most tangible result is the Espacio Lejano station in Neuquén, Argentina. The station is managed by the China Satellite Launch and Tracking General Control, an entity of the PLA Strategic Support Force, according to CSIS.

Espacio Lejano, which has a 35-meter-diameter antenna and was commissioned in 2017, is a mystery to Argentine authorities. The government has little or no access to the station's facilities, and there is speculation about its true purpose.

The base seems to serve both "Chinese civilian and military purposes," according to Aleksandra Gadzala Tirziu, an analyst and the founder and CEO of Magpie Advisory, a public affairs and geopolitical risk advisory firm.

This observation was made by Tirziu on July 4, on a report published by the consulting firm Geopolitical Intelligence Services website.

In fact, "some analysts suggest it could have been involved in the Chinese spy balloon that appeared in U.S. airspace earlier this year," she added.

The Neuquén station, which was designed to facilitate communication for Chinese spacecraft passing through the southern hemisphere, uses three frequency bands to receive and collect data. These bands are S-band, X-band and Ka-band.

“All three bands can be used to transmit data related to scientific research and commercial communications, but the X- and Ka-bands are typically reserved for government use, which may include the transmission of sensitive information,” according to the CSIS report.

Besides its ties with Argentina, China has established space relations with Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador and Venezuela. These countries have received launch services, satellite components and platforms from China, which allow them to monitor their natural resources and agricultural activity, improve telecommunications and collect geospatial data.

These data could be used for border surveillance and other national security matters.

"We are facing a very broad strategy," said Jonathan Ward, a US specialist on China-US global competition issues, in an article published on June 17 in Argentina's La Nación newspaper. "It was only in the last four or five years that the United States realized the consequences of China's global economic power and that it became a major military national security problem, not only for us but also for many other countries in Asia and the rest of the world."

The consequences for Latin America would be a deepening of economic dependence on China, as well as the possibility of Beijing exerting much more significant military and diplomatic influence on the continent, said Ward.

Along the same lines, China has a "long-term plan," Prieto highlighted to Entorno.

China knows when to "activate and deactivate the volume" of its activities according to its objectives, she said.

"The long-term objective is clearly outlined and includes the United States as a geopolitical enemy."