On inauguration day, Chile’s new president inherits a Chinese cable scandal and US threats

As the city prepared for the inauguration of its centre-right president, the new government’s first crisis was already unfolding behind the scenes: an undersea fibre-optic cable linking the South American country to Hong Kong that had enraged Washington and may prove a watershed moment in how Latin America handles critical infrastructure projects and its partnership with Beijing.

During the campaign, he adopted a strategy clearly modelled on US President Donald Trump’s playbook, promising to build a wall along the border with Bolivia to stem irregular migration and to tackle the surge in crime he sought to blame on Venezuelan refugees the country had taken in.

Yet despite his ambitions to lead a Latin American alliance of governments aligned with the United States, the president-elect now finds himself entangled in a scandal that has paralysed the country for weeks and fractured the transition preparations.

Trouble began when local media revealed that, just weeks before the end of his term, the administration of the left-wing president Gabriel Boric had quietly greenlit a fibre-optic cable initiative managed by China Mobile International connecting the country to Hong Kong.