Editor's note: Azhar Azam works in a private organization as "Market & Business Analysts" and writes on geopolitical issues and regional conflicts. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily those of CGTN.

In 2008, Chinese demand drove a commodity supercycle in Latin America, helping the region withstand the global financial crisis. International trade in 2020 collapsed due to the pandemic, yet the resilient trade with China provided a key source of external growth to Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) as their bilateral trade grew 26-fold from $12 billion to $315 billion between 2000 and 2020 with a forecast to more than double to $700 billion by 2035.

A much-needed impetus in 2020 to the region, which accounts for 30 percent of global COVID-19 mortality and witnessed 7.4 percent of GDP contraction last year, came from Beijing, which rallied around LAC to support its efforts to outride the storm and fast-track economic recovery through Chinese imports of beef, copper, oil and a number of other products from several South American states such as Brazil, Chili, Colombia and Uruguay.

The bracing China-LAC trade relationship, Beijing's investments to develop regional infrastructure and successive Chinese leaders' visits and signings of partnership agreements have alarmed U.S. policymakers about China's growing engagement in America's backyard. Passing over opportunities that the Chinese economy presents, the panic-stricken U.S. officials claimed that diplomatic overtures underpin Beijing's economic activities, and assist it to institutionalize cooperation and garner support in international fora.

China, the most important market for South America and second-biggest market for LAC overall, is crucial to reverse the trend of the region's economic downturn. As investments are likely to rebound in 2021, Beijing's offer of $1 billion in loans for vaccine purchases would give vaccine shots to a population where 37 percent of the people are inoculated. Argentina is also actively pursuing to expedite talks with China for implementation of an ambitious $30 billion investment program encompassing 15 infrastructure, energy and transport projects.

Nearly half of the countries in LAC, including three of the four largest regional economies, have seen China as their biggest trading partner. Through an estimated $140 billion investment, including $8 billion in six Caribbean states, Chinese companies have built dams, roads, railways, bridges, ports and telecommunication networks. Latin America's prominence for China was evidenced by Chinese President Xi Jinping's 11 visits to the region since assuming power in 2012.

The U.S. Southern Command's 2021 posture statement asserted China was gaining global influence and leverage across all its domains: cyber, space, extractive and energy industries, transportation hubs, roads, infrastructure, telecommunications, legal and illegal fishing, agriculture and military training. It bizarrely linked Beijing's donation of security supplies and equipment, health cooperation and the Belt and Road Initiative with winning the favor of regional security forces, pursuing "medical diplomacy," indebting the fragile economies and impinging on the U.S. allies' sovereignty.

Clearly, Washington is petrified by Beijing's burgeoning relationship with the LAC governments, 19 of whom have attached themselves with the transcontinental connectivity and infrastructure project. In 2019, China dethroned the U.S. to become the leading trade partner of Brazil, Chili, Peru and Uruguay. The close China-LAC affinity has pressed American officials to propagate a false narrative, but the regional nations rejected such U.S. warnings, saying there are no indications Beijing is creating a "military sphere of influence" and its primary interests are largely economic and diplomatic.

The so-called world superpower shouldn't coerce the region to make scratchy choices for execution of its malign geopolitical ambitions against China. Some LAC states have already lost their robust economic momentum due to the COVID-19 variants. As Nigel Chalk, acting director of the International Monetary Fund's Western Hemisphere Department, has stated, the trends of uncertain productivity with damage to human capital over "persistent unemployment, increasing informality and school closures" could take many years to reverse, so Washington needs to try not obstructing LAC economic revival.

Even though the U.S. has been a dominant power in Latin America, China is a reliable diplomatic and trade partner of the region. Washington must not bully regional nations just because most of them want to take advantage of Chinese growth or have switched recognition from China's Taiwan region to the Chinese mainland while others are signaling to make a sovereign and fair foreign policy judgment.

China never intended to politically intervene or influence the regional governments over their bilateral relations with other countries. The U.S., however, has been seeing LAC as a source of problems and ratcheting up warnings, cloaked with intimidation about the alleged region's dependence on China.

The U.S. arrogance was reflected when Secretary of States Anthony Blinken in October took a trip to Ecuador, giving an ominous warning to the region that working with Beijing could bring risks in "narrowly defined areas" albeit claiming no country would be forced to choose between China and the U.S. In September, U.S. President Joe Biden sent a diplomatic team on the first "listening tour" to South America in a bid to trumpet his Build Back Better World as a credible international initiative, though Margaret Myers, a China-Latin American expert at the Inter-American Dialogue, commented that "it's very hard to compete with China at this juncture."

Other than that, Blinken mostly wasted his visit criticizing leaders of other regional states, such as Venezuelan President's Nicolas Maduro's "deeply unfortunate" actions, discussing mass migration across the Americas, demanding accountability on human rights abuses, calling for preservation of democracy and boasting the U.S. vaccine donations without making any real investment commitments, something the regional countries need the most. Reaching Washington, he railed against Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega for trying to establish "authoritarian dynasty."

Notwithstanding Washington's animosity toward Beijing, diplomatic and trade ties between China and Latin America – particularly South America, thanks to pent-up historic Chinese demand – even during the pandemic blossomed. The relationship would further strengthen as after a decade of China-CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) cooperation – China is now considered as a natural partner of the bloc that has a history of supporting the regional countries at trying times, and was the only country where LAC exports registered an increase in 2020 by 2 percent against an overall drop of 13 percent.

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