The opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics at the Bird’s Nest Stadium on Friday marked the start of an unusual effort by the two Latin American presidents to achieve success during the Winter Games.

Argentina Alberto Fernandez and Ecuadorian William Russo China is seeking support for national economic priorities – a sign of how Beijing growing influence in Latin America.

Fernandez will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping on Sunday, where he is expected to sign Argentina to The Belt and Road Initiative. Argentina will be by far the largest Latin American country to join China’s flagship investment and infrastructure program.

Russo will also meet with Xi Jinping and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, who has a dual mission. He wants to renegotiate the terms of Ecuador’s $4 billion debt while negotiating a free trade agreement (FTA) with China.

The 2022 Winter Olympics continue to be controversial, and the United States, Britain, Australia and other countries have started diplomatic boycott It also refused to send a representative to the Olympics, citing China’s human rights record.

The two Latin American leaders will be selected along with the leaders of Russia, Qatar and Thailand.

For Argentines in particular, the timing of the Beijing trip was delicate. The Fernandez government has just reached an outline agreement with the IMF, Restructured $44.5 billion in debt, but a final staff-level agreement is still pending, and the IMF said it was still working with its counterpart in Buenos Aires.

Some observers worry that Fernandez is sending the wrong message to the fund and its main shareholder, the United States, by now meeting with Xi in Beijing.

“This is not the time to leave,” said Patricio Giusto, director of the China-Arab Observatory, a think tank in Buenos Aires. He said the trip could deal a “major blow” to Argentina’s hopes of completing the IMF deal.

But the left-wing Peronist government dismissed those concerns, saying the trip had been in the works since Fernandez took office in early 2020. The aim was “not to offend anyone” but to advance Argentina’s national interests, a source close to the president told the Financial Times.

In addition to signing the Belt and Road agreement, Argentines may also seek more loans from China. The two countries began developing a $19 billion currency swap arrangement in 2009, and Buenos Aires hopes to expand it by about $3 billion.

Argentina’s net foreign exchange reserves are all but exhausted, they were estimated to have fallen below $6 billion in December, and the country must pay $2.8 billion to the International Monetary Fund next month. If the deal with the fund falls through or is blocked by Argentina’s Congress, Fernandez may need a back-up plan to avoid a debt crisis.

Debt is also a problem in Ecuador. During Rafael Correa’s leftist government from 2007 to 2017, the Andean country was heavily indebted to China and agreed to repay many loans with oil. Russo said Correa agreed to Ecuador’s unfavorable terms and wanted to pay it back in cash, freeing up more oil to sell on the pricier spot market.

After years of steady growth in Ecuador’s trade with China, Lasso’s other stated goal is to establish a free trade agreement. In 2020, China absorbed 15.8% of Ecuador’s exports, up from 3.9% in 2015. The Chinese buy oil, shrimp, bananas, cut flowers, cocoa and wood from Quito.

The shrimp industry is developing particularly rapidly, Ecuador, a country of less than 18 million people, is now the world’s largest exporter of shrimp. Half of them are exported to China, where China’s expanding middle class is tasting seafood once considered a luxury.

But Ecuador’s shrimp farmers pay a 2 percent tariff on exports to China, while its banana growers pay a 10 percent tariff. Lasso hopes to remove these penalties through the FTA.

“The government’s proposal is to sign an agreement within a year,” said Gustavo Cáceres, president of the Ecuadorian Chinese Chamber of Commerce. “It’s a very ambitious goal, but China is really important to us. It’s our second-largest trading partner after the United States.”

Lasso’s trip to China could become “a pressure mechanism,” said Sebastián Hurtado, head of Ecuadorian political risk consultancy Prófitas, reminding the Biden administration that Quito also wants to work with Washington A free trade agreement, it is a small but important partner in the region.

and Peru and Chile Lasso’s government turned left in recent elections, and Colombia may do the same later this year, and by the end of 2022, Lasso’s government may simply be a right-leaning government in the Andes.

“Ecuador is currently in an interesting position geopolitically,” Hurtado said. “It has some leverage over the United States.”