Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa arrived in Beijing on Sunday for his first state visit to China, an eight-day trip during which he will seek to lift suspensions on 14 Ecuadorian shrimp processors and secure fresh investment in energy and mining.
Noboa will hold talks with President Xi Jinping and meet separately with Premier Li Qiang and Zhao Leji, China’s top legislator, according to Beijing’s foreign ministry. The visit runs to August 23 before the Asian tour continues to Singapore and Vietnam until August 28.
It is Noboa’s second trip to China since June last year, when he and Xi witnessed the signing of a cooperation plan under the Belt and Road Initiative, which Ecuador joined in 2018. What changes now is protocol: a state visit carries the full ceremonial apparatus, and with it the expectation of deliverables.
Beijing has framed the trip around an anniversary rather than a transaction.
In a written statement issued on August 14, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson noted that this year marks a decade since China and Ecuador established their comprehensive strategic partnership, and said Beijing “hoped the visit would further consolidate political mutual trust, carry forward what the statement called a traditional friendship, and advance the partnership”.
Those courtesies are being extended to a government that has spent the past 18 months deepening security cooperation with Washington.
Ecuador’s foreign minister, Roberto Kury, framed the trip in narrower terms, telling Radio Sucre days before departure that “China is interested in investing in energy and mining while Ecuador is interested in strengthening its exports”.
Finding a solution to the shrimp problem
China’s customs administration has suspended 14 Ecuadorian shrimp processors in stages since October 2025, the most recent taking effect on June 30, over the use of sodium metabisulphite as a preservative and detections of white spot syndrome virus.
Ecuador’s National Chamber of Aquaculture puts the losses at about US$45 million so far this year, while stressing that the measures do not amount to a general closure of the Chinese market and that shipments continue.
The stakes are high, since shrimp is Ecuador’s largest non-oil export, and the chamber says China took 51.24 per cent of the US$3.52 billion shipped between January and May.
At the centre of the dispute is a technical disagreement over what Chinese laboratories are testing.
Ecuador’s agriculture ministry said in early July that it had asked Beijing to clarify how it defines the “edible portion” in its analyses, escalating queries to Codex Alimentarius and China’s National Health Commission. A deadline for Ecuadorian rebuttals expired on July 16, with no published ruling.
The free-trade agreement in force since May 2024 establishes a bilateral trade commission empowered to review implementation and handle disputes of this kind. It has not been convened.
Banana exporters are also pressing to accelerate a tariff schedule that began at 10 per cent and stands at seven per cent in its third year of a decade-long phase-out, and to ease fruit fly protocols.
The delegation is also due to meet Cosco to discuss new shipping routes into China and neighbouring markets.
A troubled hydro plant and a 25-year contract
The harder conversation concerns Coca Codo Sinclair, Ecuador’s largest hydroelectric plant, built by China’s Sinohydro.
Ecuador formally took delivery on April 17, nearly a decade after inauguration and following an arbitration ruling, with thousands of fissures documented in the plant’s distributors, the assembly that directs water onto the turbine runners.
The state auditor counted 7,648, a figure later tallies have pushed higher. Quito has returned US$98.9 million in guarantees to Sinohydro and is pursuing an outstanding US$36 million insurance policy, according to the energy ministry.
At the same time, it is negotiating an operations and maintenance contract with PowerChina, Sinohydro’s parent, worth about US$46 million a year over 25 years, or roughly US$1.15 billion in total.
A 2009 study by consultancy Electroconsult estimated annual O&M costs at around US$18 million. The two figures are not directly comparable, given 17 years of inflation and changes in the plant’s condition, but the gap has drawn scrutiny in Quito. The government has said it could sign the contract by December.
PowerChina did not respond to a request for comment. Sinohydro has not publicly addressed the fissures since delivery.
With the energy ministry projecting a shortfall of about 1,300MW for the 2026-27 dry season, the government is pressing Chinese-held mining projects to generate their own power.
Cascabel, which came under Jiangxi Copper’s control in March, is seeking a contract addendum whose sticking point is exactly that. Mirador, run by CRCC-Tongguan subsidiary Ecuacorriente, has delayed expansion over a similar dispute.
Ecuador’s negotiating position is complicated by what it wants from Chinese lenders. The 2026 budget anticipates US$764 million in disbursements, US$420 million from Eximbank and US$344 million from China Development Bank, tied to specific investment projects, but the final terms were not made public yet.
How to keep Washington happy despite seeking Beijing trade deals
Noboa has aligned Ecuador more closely with the United States than any recent president.
In March, Quito and Washington signed a Reciprocal Trade Agreement removing US surcharges on 53 per cent of Ecuador’s non-oil exports, though it has not yet taken effect and sits before Ecuador’s Constitutional Court, which must decide whether the legislature has to ratify it. Noboa said in March that some terms could be renegotiated this month.
US special forces began joint counter-narcotics operations on Ecuadorian soil in March, the same month Noboa attended a regional security summit hosted by US President Donald Trump in Doral, Florida. He was received at the Pentagon by US defence chief Pete Hegseth in June.
Ecuadorian voters set a ceiling on that alignment last November, rejecting a lifting of the constitutional ban on foreign military bases by about 61 per cent, along with every other question Noboa put to them. The result closed off the most visible form of US military presence.
“The United States is Ecuador’s main security partner”, Noboa told a Guayaquil radio station in April, “but the country has to keep trading with the whole world”.
Chinese engagement in Ecuador predates him by close to two decades. Beijing financed Coca Codo Sinclair and a series of other infrastructure projects under Rafael Correa, whose government also began pre-selling oil to Chinese state firms.
The relationship continued through Lenin Moreno, who turned to the International Monetary Fund but did not unwind the Chinese loans, and through Guillermo Lasso, under whom the free-trade agreement was negotiated and signed.
China has become Ecuador’s second-largest source of imports, accounting for 28.3 per cent in the first quarter, down from 30 per cent for the United States, central bank figures show. -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
