China’s projects in Peru have been fueling tensions with local residents and impacting human rights and the environment. The cases are mainly taking place where China is investing the most: in mining and infrastructure.

Perhaps, the case of the Chancay Port stands out most. Recently inaugurated in November 2024 and hailed as a landmark development in Peru’s infrastructure, the megaport of Chancay, majority owned by Chinese state-owned enterprise COSCO, has drawn significant criticism for its negative environmental and social impact. Not only has construction damaged the nearby protected Santa Rosa Wetland, a vital ecosystem for various bird species, it destroyed the marine life and habitat with its dredging process, depriving fishermen of the waters they relied on for their livelihoods.

Locals have also expressed concerns throughout the construction of the megaport about air and noise pollution, and the lack of engagement with the community from the Chinese company, whose works damaged homes and roads from the blasts and explosions to build the infrastructure. The port’s construction has also harmed Chancay’s tourism, as it changed water currents, affecting surfing conditions, and contributed to beach erosion.

“Chancay is a very symbolic and important project for China. The inauguration was even attended by Xi Jinping, president of the People’s Republic of China. It’s a mega-development with profound impacts, especially on the most vulnerable communities, such as fishermen,” Laura Waisbich, deputy director of Programs at the Igarapé Institute, an independent think tank in Brazil, told Diálogo.

In a 2025 report for the United States Institute of Peace, Juan Pablo Cardenal, associate researcher at the Argentina-based Center for Latin American Openness and Development, analyzed a series of Chinese projects in countries in the region.

“China’s economic presence in Peru is based on two pillars, trade and investment, which are fundamentally linked to mining. Although this system generates trade, tax revenues, employment, and infrastructure, many projects by Chinese state-owned companies are surrounded by controversy,” says the report. “Several Chinese mining projects in Peru have provoked outrage because of their environmental, social, or labor impacts.”

Throughout Latin America, one can see “a pattern of non-compliance by the Chinese state with international human rights and environmental standards.” The report also highlights the Chinese authorities’ recurrent refusal to interact with local civil society to address problems or improve Chinese companies’ poor reputation for corporate social responsibility.

The town of New Morococha is a case in point. In 2013, the Chinese mining company Chinalco relocated the entire town of 5,000 residents, 12 kilometers down the road, to make way for a copper mine. The move, touted at the time as a solution to protect residents from the pollution and environmental degradation resulting from mining practices, more than a decade later proved to be a tragedy.

Chinalco promised to resettle the inhabitants in a new town “built from scratch,” committing to providing good housing, local jobs, educational, and healthcare centers, but the company failed to deliver. The new site is cut off from the central highway, has been set up in a swampy area prone to flooding, while the population struggles with poverty and unemployment. The families who stayed at the old Morococha site face daily harassment from Chinalco to leave, as well as constant tremors, dust, and noise from explosions.

Joselyn Jaua, a Peruvian journalist who covers the environment and communities in the region, explained to social activism platform Global Voices that Chinalco’s policies have had a profound impact on both Old Morococha and New Morococha: “The increase in poverty is noticeable for both relocated and non-relocated people.”

Las Bambas copper mine in Peru’s Cotabambas province, owned by China’s Minmetals Corporation (China MMG), which has a history of protests organized by the local communities since it began operations in 2016, has been facing renewed discontent by locals who, throughout 2024, blocked the main transport route for mining vehicles, in an attempt to get the company to comply with their demands for better living conditions. Among the complaints were compensation payments for noise and dust pollution to employment demands, Dialogue Earth reported.

Years prior, Chinese state-owned company Shougang, which began operating an iron ore mine in San Juan de Marcona in the late 1990s, perhaps set a precedent for the actions and controversies that would surround Chinese companies in Peru. “The long-festering conflict with Shougang over wages, environmental pollution, and Shougang’s treatment of residents of this company town does not square well with China’s celebratory vision of its rising profile in Latin America,” The New York Times wrote back in 2010.

Workers not only complained of low wages but claimed that Shougang had dumped chemical waste into the sea. More recently, in 2023, Peruvian workers complained that they were being treated like slaves. Rather than investing in a promised $150 million into the mine and infrastructure for the town, the company opted to pay a fine to the Peruvian government of $14 million for not having done so.

In a report, the Collective on Chinese Financing and Investment, Human Rights, and the Environment, a coalition of nongovernmental organizations, concluded that all three Chinese mining companies violated the human rights of Peruvian communities in the interior of the country.

For Isaac Kardon, researcher on China studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, “Latin America and the Caribbean are often attracted to China’s infrastructure investments, but they come at a price, because through them it consolidates access to resources, captures elites, gains influence over governments, changes national policies in its favor, and undermines democratic norms, transparency, and environmental standards.”

“China is one of the biggest economic partners of the countries in the region, both as a buyer of commodities and as an investor,” says Waisbich. “The power of the Chinese market has made regional trade less vigorous. We have also seen deindustrialization (or economic reprimarization) in some countries. In the case of strategic sectors for the ecological transition, such as renewable energies and electric vehicles, we see a growing technological dependence on China (even when countries in the region participate in the production chains, as a source of minerals),” he concluded.