This is John Batchel, conversation with colleague Professor Evan Ellis of the U.S. Army War College,

about China in the Americas, China with its Belt and Road, China with its promises and badly built projects.

What does Latin America hear when it is approached by China?

It's complicated, and Evan explains the tariff story has made everybody

hesitate, but what I get from this is there's a big pause button in Latin America, and everybody's

hitting it hard on China investment, including China investors. Here's Evan to explain. More of this tonight.

We haven't seen the meeting and the associated rhetoric take place yet, but a couple things are

clear. Number one is that the PRC cautiously sees the very different policy of the Trump

administration over his predecessor in things like

tariffs and perceived threats of military action and other things, as an opportunity for China

to present itself as the reliable pro-trade, non-threatening partner.

As you just pointed out, John, that's not entirely true by any measure.

If you look at China's behavior, whether it's crushing democracy in Hong Kong or rounding

up Uyghur Muslims, or its militarization of violence and treatment of other claimants in places

like the South China Sea. However, another thing that's happening is that in many places in the

region, at least the near-term response has been caution of those nations and moving forward

with projects with China. It was just in Mexico a couple of weeks ago, and it was interesting

to see how Shinebom has put a number of those projects on hold.

The Chinese themselves, seeing the pushback from the Trump administration, many Chinese investors have been reluctant to move forward.