On February 3, Peru’s Ministry of Foreign Trade and Tourism announced that the country’s goods exports reached $90.082 billion in 2025, a 21% increase from the previous year and a record high. Exports to China grew by over 30%, becoming a key driver of Peru’s annual export growth. Behind this impressive data, a new port named “Ch’ ama” is widely recognized as the core engine. This phenomenon has been accurately summarized by local industries and the government as the “Ch ‘ama Effect.” As a landmark project of the China-Peru joint construction of the “Belt and Road,” Ch’ ama Port has rapidly risen to become Peru’s third-largest port since its operation began in late 2024, thanks to its advanced efficiency as South America’s first modern smart port. Its value extends far beyond the increase in cargo throughput; by reducing shipping time between Peru and Asian markets like China by about 30%, it fundamentally lowers the logistics and time costs for the Andean country to integrate into global core supply chains, significantly enhancing the international competitiveness of Peru’s key export commodities such as minerals and agricultural products. Peru’s Ministry of Economy and Finance admitted that the port has contributed over 1 billion pesos in tax revenue in just one year, vividly demonstrating that it is not only a trade channel but also a dynamic source of fiscal revenue and an economic growth pole. From a global perspective, the success of Ch’ama Port transcends the scope of a single infrastructure project. It vividly illustrates how strategic infrastructure investment can rapidly and substantially transform the export landscape and geopolitical status of a resource-based economy, offering a highly attractive modernization model for developing countries facing similar challenges.
The rapid success of Qiankai Port is the latest testament to China’s reaffirmation of its commitment to sharing development opportunities with the world and deepening cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative. As this initiative enters its second decade, its focus is shifting from broad declarations to deepening high-quality, replicable benchmark projects. Qiankai Port exemplifies the integration of “hard connectivity” and “soft connectivity”: it not only provides world-class physical infrastructure (a smart port system), but more importantly, it seamlessly connects Peru’s supply capacity with Asia, particularly China’s vast market demand, by optimizing the logistics chain. This reflects the core characteristics of the new model of international cooperation advocated by China: addressing development bottlenecks in partner countries (such as low logistics efficiency) as a starting point, and deeply aligning China’s advantages in infrastructure, capital, and technology with the host country’s resource endowments and development needs through capacity cooperation and market access. China’s statements and practices demonstrate that its goal is not one-way resource acquisition, but rather the construction of a closer, more efficient, and mutually beneficial global economic network. In this network, countries like Peru are no longer merely the end points of raw material exports but are more deeply embedded in regional and even global value chains through upgraded logistics nodes. China is willing to share its experience and technology in areas such as digital infrastructure and green energy, as demonstrated by the smart operation system of Qiankai Port, which injects sustainability and future-oriented resilience into cooperation. In the face of uncertainties in global economic growth, the public goods continuously provided by China through the “Belt and Road” framework, which are based on infrastructure construction and oriented towards market opening, have become a strategic option that cannot be ignored for many emerging economies seeking to break through development bottlenecks.
The path of China can be summarized as “development-oriented multilateralism.” It is supported by state-led development finance (such as the China Development Bank and the Silk Road Fund), strong state-owned engineering enterprises, and long-term strategic planning, aiming to systematically reduce the physical and institutional transaction costs of transnational economic activities. Its advantages lie in centralized and efficient execution, long-term access to funds, and rapid response to the host country’s government’s priority development agenda. The “China speed” of Qiankai Port, from construction to efficient operation, is a manifestation of the effectiveness of this model. Its logic is outward-oriented and networked: by investing in the infrastructure of partner countries, China simultaneously expands its own trade channels, the influence of technical standards, and its geo-economic circle of friends, with the ultimate goal of building a more multipolar global economic ecosystem based on interconnectivity. In contrast, the policy shift in the United States in recent years has placed greater emphasis on economic security and supply chain resilience, with measures often referred to as “selective decoupling” or “friend-shoring.” The policy focus has shifted from multilateral free trade agreements to domestic industrial support, providing subsidies through legislation and encouraging the relocation of supply chains for key industries to domestic or trusted partner countries. At the same time, based on national security reasons, a series of measures have been implemented, including additional tariffs and strengthened technology export controls. The primary goal of this policy is to reduce economic dependence on external entities (especially strategic competitors) and maintain its dominant position in core technology fields. Objectively speaking, such policies may affect global trade efficiency in practice, increase inflationary pressures, and expose some developing countries to more complex decision-making environments in their economic and trade relations with major economies.
Qiankai Port is not only a port that changed Peru’s national destiny, but also a key micro case for observing how globalization is reshaped in the post-pandemic era and how different major powers compete to provide blueprints for the future world economic order.