James Kynge

China has said that it's providing about 25 billion US dollars in loans to Iran to build all kinds of infrastructure projects there.

And an even bigger project was inked in 2021.

That is when Iran and China signed a 25-year agreement for 400 billion.

Let me say that figure again, 400 billion US dollars.

in Chinese investment in energy, transport, banking, telecoms, and of course the oil sector as well.

So what we have now is a situation in which one of China's biggest non-Western partners is being plunged deeply into chaos

That's in the case of Iran.

And in the case of Venezuela, well, we already know what's happened there.

Maduro has been deposed, and the US is saying that it wants to run not only Venezuela, but it wants to expunge the Western Hemisphere, which basically means Latin America, wants to expunge the influence of non-hemispheric powers.

That's a kind of US code for China and Russia.

So

Really, 2026 could not have got off to a worse start for Chinese foreign policy.

What are you seeing, Alice?

I know that you're looking at both of these issues very carefully right now.

Yes, absolutely, Alice.

And just to go back to Latin America, I very much concur with what you're saying.

I've just been doing a bit of research on how deep Chinese involvement with Latin America is.

And I really concur with you that it's going to be very hard for the US to counter China in any kind of comprehensive way.

I came across some interesting research from an academic called Francisco Udinez, who's an assistant professor at

at the Pontifical Catholic University in Chile.