China's Naval Expansion in the South Atlantic

Abstract

This article examines why China’s expanding naval presence in the South Atlantic, evidenced by port operations in over thirty African countries and intensifying military exercises on the continent, has not triggered a strategic response from Brazil. It argues that Brazilian inaction results from three converging causal factors: asymmetric trade dependence on China, bureaucratic compartmentalization between diplomacy and defense, and the absence of a strategic concept classifying the South Atlantic as a space of geopolitical competition. It proposes a cooperative presence doctrine, inspired by India’s Indian Ocean approach, articulating maritime surveillance, cooperation with the United States and African coastal states, and preservation of Brazil–China bilateral relations. The article is structured into a causal-explanatory section followed by a prescriptive section with concrete policy recommendations.

Introduction

When Alfred Thayer Mahan published his thesis on the influence of sea power upon history in 1890, he was not merely describing the past: he was prescribing the future. The nation that controls the seas, he argued, controls trade; the nation that controls trade shapes the international order. More than a century later, Mahan’s lesson remains valid, even though the landscape has changed in ways that the U.S. admiral himself could hardly have foreseen. The South Atlantic, regarded for centuries as a peripheral maritime space, an ocean of passage between more important routes, is now emerging as an arena of strategic competition among great powers. And Brazil, which has the longest Atlantic coastline in the Southern Hemisphere, the fourth-largest Exclusive Economic Zone on the planet, and an extended continental shelf of 5.7 million square kilometers, is watching this transformation with a passivity that may be characterized as strategic negligence.¹

The central problem of this article is causal in nature: why has the rapid expansion of the Chinese naval presence in the South Atlantic, manifested in the construction, financing, and operation of ports in more than thirty African countries, in the conduct of bilateral and multilateral military exercises on the continent, and in the growing projection of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) into South Atlantic waters, failed to produce any coordinated strategic response on the part of Brazil? The question is not trivial. A country that has named its jurisdictional waters the “Blue Amazon,” that has developed this concept as a central component of its defense discourse, and that presents itself as the natural leader of security in the South Atlantic should, for the sake of internal consistency, have formulated at least an assessment of the strategic impact of the growing presence of an extraregional power in the waters it considers its vital surroundings.²

The central causal-explanatory argument of this article maintains that the absence of a Brazilian response stems from three converging factors: first, Brazil’s asymmetric trade dependence on China, which inhibits any posture that might be perceived as confrontational; second, the bureaucratic compartmentalization between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Itamaraty) and the Ministry of Defense, which prevents the formulation of an integrated foreign and defense policy strategy for the South Atlantic; and third, the absence of a strategic concept that classifies the South Atlantic as a space of geopolitical competition, rather than merely as a zone of cooperation. These three factors interact synergistically, generating a self-reinforcing cycle of paralysis whose consequences become progressively more difficult to reverse.

The article’s central prescription proposes the construction of a doctrine of cooperative presence for the South Atlantic, inspired, mutatis mutandis, by the model that India has been developing for the Indian Ocean. Such a doctrine would enable Brazil to monitor and condition the Chinese naval presence without causing a rupture in bilateral trade relations, while at the same time strengthening defense cooperation with the United States and with the coastal countries of West and Southern Africa. The practical relevance of this prescription lies in the fact that the window of opportunity for articulating such a doctrine is finite: as China consolidates its dual-use port infrastructure in the South Atlantic and intensifies the pace of military exercises in the region, the political and material cost of a belated Brazilian response will progressively increase.³

The implementation of the proposed doctrine would, moreover, have a structuring impact on Brazil–United States bilateral relations, positioning Brazil as a reliable security partner and a regional power capable of assuming responsibilities in its strategic environment. Cooperation with Washington, along the lines proposed here, does not imply strategic subordination, but rather functional complementarity, analogous to that which India has built with the United States without joining formal alliances.

This article is structured in two sections. Section I, causal in nature, examines the three factors that explain Brazilian strategic inaction, analyzing their reciprocal interactions and cumulative effects. Section II, prescriptive in character, develops the concept of cooperative presence, grounds it in the strategic and naval literature, and proposes concrete recommendations for its implementation, including the dimensions of cooperation with the United States and the management of bilateral relations with China.

Section I — Causal

Chinese Expansion and Brazilian Paralysis: Anatomy of Inaction

The Chinese naval presence in the South Atlantic is not a sudden phenomenon, but the result of a long-term strategy articulated in Beijing’s Five-Year Plans and operationalized by the complex of state-owned enterprises that constitutes the implementing arm of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The 2021–2025 Five-Year Plan explicitly mentions a connectivity framework composed of six corridors, six routes, and multiple countries and ports, three of these corridors crossing the African continent and reaching East Africa (Kenya and Tanzania), Egypt and the Suez Canal region, and Tunisia. The plan articulates the vision of transforming China into a “strong maritime power,” as part of its broader ambition to be recognized as a major global power.⁴

Chinese companies hold equity, operational, or construction stakes in at least 78 of the African continent’s 231 commercial ports, with a disproportionate concentration on the western Atlantic coast: 35 ports in West Africa, compared with 17 in East Africa, 15 in Southern Africa, and 11 in North Africa. This presence is unmatched in any other region: Latin America hosts only 10 ports built or operated by Chinese entities, and Asia, 24. The quantitative data, however, are less revealing than the underlying qualitative pattern. The Chinese strategy consists not merely in building ports, but in building integrated logistics chains that connect port terminals to mines, railways, and highways, creating supply lines resilient to sanctions that could continue operating even in a scenario of deteriorating relations with the West: for example, in the context of a crisis over Taiwan.

At least seven ports in Africa financed by Chinese companies have specifications that allow for dual use. The port of Walvis Bay, in Namibia, has the capacity to accommodate up to eight guided-missile destroyers. The port of Luanda, in Angola, can receive large surface vessels from the Chinese fleet.

Chinese military analysts, quoted in the state press, have framed these exercises as demonstrations of China’s growing capacity to project power in distant seas and to protect strategic maritime routes for BRICS Plus members.⁶