James Kynge

And he has calculated that China has already economically displaced the U.S.

in 10 out of 12 countries in South America.

So South America is obviously the southern part of Latin America.

It includes countries like Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, etc.,

What he means is that China is the primary trading partner of these countries, that it's invested heavily in infrastructure such as ports, roads, railways and power plants.

And it's securing access to crucial resources in South America as well, such as lithium and copper.

So I think you're absolutely right, Alice.

I think although it's easy to be captured and caught up with this idea of this unbelievable, overwhelming lightning strike that the American military launched on Madero to take him out of Venezuela and be swept away by a sense of U.S.

dominance, but underneath the hood, as it were,

China's tentacles are so deeply embedded into the economies of Latin America, South America.

And it's just not going to be that easy for America to take its hemisphere back.

You know, it's just not going to be that easy.

It will be, in my view, a long run battle.

Some forward steps by China, some backward steps by the U.S.

and vice versa for several years to come.

Absolutely.

I think there must be policy thinkers, policymakers in Beijing, particularly in the foreign policy area, that are wondering whether their strategy for the last decade or more, in fact, more than two decades, of undermining US power in the world by allying themselves with

effectively rivals of the US, such as Iran and Venezuela and some of the other ones that you've mentioned.

I think that there must be policymakers that are wondering about the wisdom of that policy now that we see what's happening in Venezuela, Iran, and potentially in some of the other countries too.

This really is a big setback for Chinese foreign policy goals.