The US military is monitoring 23 Chinese port projects and 12 space-enabling facilities across Latin America and considers every one of them “a potential dual-use asset” that could support Chinese military operations, the top US commander for South America told Congress on Tuesday.
General Francis Donovan, head of US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), made the disclosure during a House Armed Services Committee hearing on US military posture in the western hemisphere.
Asked by Lance Gooden, a Republican congressman from Texas, whether Chinese commercial projects in the region could serve military purposes, Donovan said the Pentagon treats all of them as dual use regardless of how they are built.
“I consider them all dual-use,” Donovan said, “and specifically whether they’re built with a military infrastructure background or they’re just a functional device that could be used to support Chinese actions.”
He also said China’s growing role in mining and processing critical minerals in Latin America poses a long-term risk to the US defence industrial base.
The 12 space sites are concentrated in the southern cone of South America, Donovan said. He did not name the facilities or the countries where they are located.
The hearing came as the Trump administration has cited Chinese infrastructure penetration of the region as a primary security concern.
In December, the White House released a national security strategy pledging to prevent non-Western powers from expanding their foothold across the western hemisphere. The document introduced what officials called the “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, declaring that the United States would deny non-hemispheric competitors the ability to own or control strategically vital assets in the region.
Joseph Humire, the Defence Department’s senior civilian official for the western hemisphere, echoed that framing on Tuesday, describing Washington’s approach as aimed at denying adversaries access to key terrain from Alaska and Greenland to the Panama Canal and surrounding countries.
On Brazil, Donovan described a deliberate effort to pull the Brazilian military away from China.
In September 2024, American and Chinese troops took part together for the first time in Operation Formosa, one of Latin America’s largest amphibious exercises, led by the Brazilian armed forces. It was the first time the two militaries had trained side by side since 2016. The following year, Washington pulled out of the exercise rather than share the training ground with Chinese forces.
Donovan said that this year China will be excluded and the US will attend. The Brazilian Ministry of Defence did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether Beijing will be invited.
The exchange came after Gooden raised the presence of former Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff in China, where she chairs the board of the Brics’ New Development Bank.
He said building US ties with the Brazilian armed forces was Washington’s path forward, and deferred broader diplomatic questions to the State Department.
The testimony reflects a broader US push to limit Chinese infrastructure gains in the region.
As reported by the South China Morning Post on Monday, a US diplomat told Brazilian port executives in Santos that Washington did not want a Chinese company to win the concession for the city’s main container terminal, the largest port in Latin America. The US consulate in Sao Paulo later confirmed concerns over Chinese participation in the auction.
Jennifer Kiggans, a Republican congresswoman from Virginia, raised the Belt and Road Initiative’s spread into Central and South America and asked whether regional governments had grown more sceptical of Chinese infrastructure offers.
Donovan said Washington “remained concerned” about Beijing’s ability to embed dual-use projects across the region and drew a comparison to Djibouti, where China parlayed port financing into its first overseas military base.
NORTHCOM and SOUTHCOM are also coordinating through a joint exercise series called Elite Constellation, designed to assess the Chinese threat across all geographic combatant commands, Donovan and General Gregory Guillot, head of US Northern Command, confirmed. -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
