In order to further support global artificial intelligence development and promote global artificial intelligence capacity-building, China will provide 5,000 opportunities for specialized training in artificial intelligence for developing countries over the next five years; establish international artificial intelligence application cooperation centers for ASEAN, the Arab League, the African Union, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), and the BRICS countries. These initiatives respond to the development anxieties of Latin American countries in the digital era and will help these countries enhance their artificial intelligence development capabilities, foster new digital growth dynamics, and lay a solid digital foundation for building a community of shared future for China and Latin America.
The “Common Action Plan for Cooperation in Key Areas between China and Member States of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) (2025-2027)”, adopted at the fourth ministerial conference of the China-CELAC Forum in May 2025, explicitly identifies cooperation in the field of artificial intelligence as a key area of cooperation. This plan, which is rooted in the long-term development of the comprehensive partnership between China and Latin America, precisely aligns with global trends in digital transformation, the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, and the digital development strategies of Latin American countries. The establishment of an International Center for Cooperation on Artificial Intelligence Applications is the institutional realization of the policy consensus between China and Latin America into a sustainable cooperation mechanism.
The cooperation between China and Latin America in artificial intelligence (AI) possesses strong complementarities and internal driving forces. The “Latin America AI Index 2025” published by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) shows that the overall level of AI development in Latin America is mid-to-low among the world’s regions. Latin America’s gross domestic product (GDP) and population account for approximately 6.6% and 8.8% of the global total, respectively. However, Latin America absorbs only 1.12% of global AI investments. Moreover, for a long time, Latin America has lacked self-controlled foundational AI models, and digital public services and business ecosystems have been heavily reliant on Western cloud infrastructure, resulting in significant development challenges such as high technical barriers, insufficient local innovation capabilities, and weak digital industries, as well as the loss of digital sovereignty. China’s mature AI industry solutions, lightweight application technologies, low-cost infrastructure models, and principles of inclusive cooperation are highly compatible with the digital transformation needs of Latin American countries, providing an optimized path for Latin America to overcome its digital development bottlenecks and achieve self-reliant development.
Driven by the development of digital technology in China and the concept of open cooperation, the resilience of the China-Latin America digital partnership has continued to emerge, and significant achievements have been made in the fields of artificial intelligence and digital technology. In the area of smart agriculture, the China-Brazil Family Agricultural Mechanization Brasília Technology Cottage focuses on the challenges faced by Brazilian agricultural development, providing localized smart agricultural solutions that have significantly reduced production and labor costs, thereby contributing to food security and the transformation and upgrading of modern agriculture in Latin America. Digital technology cooperation has not only solidified the foundation of Latin American digital infrastructure but has also powerfully driven the upgrading of regional smart industry clusters and the optimization of industrial chains. Through the China-Latin America digital cooperation platform, Chinese enterprises have been deeply involved in the construction of regional computing centers, 5G communication networks, and the development of integrated applications combining BeiDou and AI in Chile, Peru, and Mexico, thereby creating regional digital computing hubs, bridging the gap in high-end computing capacity in Latin America, and establishing a digital infrastructure system that serves the entire region.
Meanwhile, both sides continue to promote the localization of AI innovation. Taking advantage of Latin America’s linguistic strengths in Spanish and Portuguese, they have jointly developed multilingual intelligent models, focusing on applications such as cross-border e-commerce, smart government services, and digital public welfare. This aims to cultivate new and emerging digital industries in Latin America and help the region gradually build a self-reliant digital ecosystem.
Looking to the future, China will steadfastly uphold the principles of consultation, joint construction, and shared benefits, continue to deepen pragmatic cooperation in artificial intelligence with Latin American countries, fully leverage the platform’s outreach and demonstration functions of the CARICOM International Artificial Intelligence Application Cooperation Center, utilize China’s full industrial chain and comprehensive application advantages to precisely address Latin America’s digital transformation needs, continuously expand the scope and depth of China-Latin America digital cooperation, and use digital empowerment to deepen the construction of a community of shared destiny between China and Latin America. (Outlook New Era)
(The author is an assistant researcher at the Institute of Latin American Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.)
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