Trends in Chinese FDI in South America: Findings from the regional repository of Chinese investments in Latin America

The Regional Repository of Chinese Investments in Latin America is a first of its kind effort to document and visually represent Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI) in the region since 2003. The project began in 2024 and has been carried out by Chile's Núcleo Milenio on the Impacts of China in Latin America and the Caribbean, the Inter-American Dialogue, and an extensive team of interdisciplinary researchers and partner institutions spanning the Americas. The Repository is continuously updated by our network of on-the-ground researchers in pursuit of the most accurate account possible of Chinese investment in the region. At present, it contains 296 instances, or $132 billion, of confirmed Chinese FDI in eight countries—Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay—Latin America, with plans to grow the Repository to visualize Chinese FDI in additional Latin American nations in the coming months. The Repository is intended to supplement existing efforts to document Chinese FDI in several ways. First, it georeferences FDI instances. Using points and vectors, the Repository's interactive map visualizes the extent of Chinese investment (whether greenfield, mergers and acquisitions, and joint ventures) across the region. Points are used for investments in discrete assets like mines or real estate, while vectors represent projects that span longer distances, such as roads, railways, and stakes in oil fields.