US will help Peru ‘take back’ Chancay port from China, Congress chair says

A senior US lawmaker called on Peru’s next government to reclaim the Chinese-controlled port of Chancay, describing the deepwater facility as a direct military threat to the western hemisphere.Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, said during a hearing on Thursday that Washington would help Peru wrest the megaport from Chinese hands.“The new Peruvian government, which will be elected next June, must take it back, that port, take it back, and the United States will help them,” Salazar said.She argued the port had “dual usage” potential, meaning it could shift from commercial to military operations. Salazar said this would allow Chinese submarines, aircraft carriers and battleships to operate from Peruvian territory.Michael Kozak, the US State Department’s senior bureau official for Western Hemisphere Affairs, who was testifying as the sole administration witness at the hearing, said Peruvian officials themselves were “alarmed” after a court ruling freed the port’s Chinese operator from domestic regulatory oversight.In February, a lower court in Lima sided with Cosco in a constitutional protection action against Peru’s national transport infrastructure regulator Ositran.The judge ordered the agency to refrain from exercising powers of regulation, supervision and sanction over port operations. Cosco argued the terminal was built entirely with private capital and not under a state concession contract.“When they found out that the Chinese were free from any kind of regulatory control by the government of Peru, it was pretty shocking,” Kozak said.Ositran president Veronica Zambrano said at the time that the decision would make Cosco “the only company providing services to the public that could not be supervised”. Peru’s government announced it would appeal.The ruling drew a sharp public response from the US State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, which warned on social media that Peru risked becoming “powerless to oversee Chancay” and called the port’s Chinese owners “predatory”.“Cheap Chinese money costs sovereignty,” the bureau wrote.Further ReadingChina’s foreign ministry rejected the criticism at the time, with spokesperson Lin Jian saying Beijing “firmly opposes and strongly deplores the US’ blatant rumour-mongering and smearing of Chancay port”. Cosco said the court decision “in no way involves aspects of sovereignty” and that the terminal remains under Peruvian jurisdiction.The Port of Chancay is a US$1.3 billion facility located about 80 kilometres north of Lima and majority owned by China’s state-run Cosco Shipping Ports. Chinese President Xi Jinping inaugurated the terminal in November 2024, during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit hosted by Peru.Since opening, the port has cut shipping times between South America and China to about 23 days and reduced logistics costs by more than 20 per cent. It handled more than 336,000 twenty-foot equivalent units in its first year.Thursday’s hearing took place as Peru counts votes from its April presidential election. With more than 93 per cent of ballots tallied, Keiko Fujimori leads the field with 17 per cent of valid votes. Roberto Sanchez, a centre-left congressman and political heir to former president Pedro Castillo, and conservative former Lima mayor Rafael Lopez Aliaga are separated by fewer than 10,000 votes in the race for second place and a spot in the June run-off.But the political backdrop remains volatile, after Congress ousted President Jose Jeri in February after just four months in office over a scandal involving undisclosed meetings with Chinese businessman Zhihua Yang. A caretaker president, Jose Maria Balcazar, is governing until the winner takes office.China’s trade with Peru rose 17.8 per cent last year to US$50.96 billion, a record driven largely by mineral exports. Beijing is now the destination for roughly a third of all Peruvian exports.