Chile's Foreign Minister Spends Five Days in China Discussing AI Cooperation

Chile's Foreign Minister, Francisco Pérez Mackenna, led a five-day diplomatic trip to China, from August 18 to 22, 2026, that took him to Beijing and Shanghai on an agenda centered on artificial intelligence, the digital economy, and scientific and technological innovation. According to The Rio Times, the trip came at the direct invitation of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, framed within the foreign policy of José Antonio Kast's government toward closer technology cooperation with Beijing.

An agenda with five areas of focus

According to The Rio Times, the official agenda for the visit revolved around four thematic areas: artificial intelligence, the digital economy, scientific and technological innovation, and talent training. A fifth item was added to that list, the integration of industrial supply chains between Chile and Chinese technology companies, a topic that connects the conversation on AI directly to the productive base that sustains it. The combination of these five areas describes a trip that was not limited to a single technology topic, but treated artificial intelligence as part of a broader economic and industrial strategy.

High-level meetings in Beijing

Pérez Mackenna's meeting schedule in Beijing included, according to The Rio Times, encounters with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who extended the original invitation to the Chilean official; Vice-Premier He Lifeng; the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) Vice-Minister, Zhou Haibing; and the Minister of Science and Technology, Yin Hejun. Each of these four officials represents a distinct piece of the machinery China uses to coordinate its innovation policy: the foreign ministry for the bilateral relationship, the vice-premiership for high-level economic coordination, the NDRC for industrial planning, and the Ministry of Science and Technology for the research and innovation agenda itself. The fact that Pérez Mackenna met with all four on a single trip suggests the conversation was not limited to protocol gestures, but touched directly on how China institutionally organizes its artificial intelligence and digitalization strategy.

The "Choose Chile" session and the weight of Chinese companies

During his time in Beijing, Pérez Mackenna took part in an investment promotion session called "Choose Chile," according to The Rio Times. The event was attended by executives from major Chinese companies across the mining, agrifood, energy, infrastructure, telecoms, and banking sectors. The mix of sectors present in the room, from mining to telecoms and banking, describes precisely the kind of Chinese investment Chile is seeking to attract: not just capital directed in isolation at artificial intelligence, but broader industrial investment in which digitalization functions as a cross-cutting component, integrated into the mining, energy, and infrastructure supply chain that already connects the two countries.

No AI agreement, but an agricultural memorandum in parallel

Despite the intensity of the technology agenda, The Rio Times reported that the visit did not produce any formally signed technology or artificial intelligence agreement between the two governments. The conversation on AI, the digital economy, scientific innovation, and talent training remained, as far as reported, in the realm of political dialogue rather than the signing of binding instruments. There was one concrete outcome during that same window, though in a different sector: on August 20, a separate delegation signed an agricultural memorandum with China's General Administration of Customs, related to phytosanitary rules for Chilean export fruit. The difference between the two outcomes, zero technology agreements versus one signed agricultural memorandum, illustrates where the bilateral relationship stands today: consolidated and operational in traditional trade, still exploratory in artificial intelligence.

The data infrastructure already operating in Chile

While diplomacy moves forward without formal artificial intelligence agreements, much of the data infrastructure that would support future technology cooperation is already, to varying degrees, installed or underway. According to figures cited by The Rio Times, Huawei currently operates two data centers in Chile and announced a third, valued at about US$100 million. At the same time, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon have already committed data center capacity in the country. Not everything is moving at the same pace: the Chile-China Express submarine cable project, which would directly connect the digital infrastructure of both countries, remains frozen in governmental review, according to the same report. That combination, active private investment in data centers alongside a strategic connectivity project stalled at the government level, precisely captures the current state of the digital relationship between Chile and China: there is appetite for infrastructure, but high-level coordination has not yet closed the loop.

The commercial backdrop: copper, bilateral trade, and mining

Bilateral trade between Chile and China reached US$67.1 billion in 2025, according to The Rio Times. That same year, Chilean copper production reached 5.415 million tonnes, while Daniel Mas set a target of six million tonnes annually for the mining sector, according to the same report. Cochilco's investment portfolio for the 2025 to 2034 period totals US$104.5 billion. These figures give a sense of the economic weight surrounding any diplomatic conversation between the two countries: the underlying commercial relationship, dominated by copper and mining, is the foundation on which an additional layer of cooperation in artificial intelligence and the digital economy is now being attempted.

What this means for your business

This diplomatic trip is one more symptom of a phenomenon we have been documenting on this blog: artificial intelligence has stopped being a niche technology topic and has become high-level foreign policy agenda. If an entire government devotes five days of formal diplomacy, with meetings involving a foreign minister, a vice-premier, an industrial planning vice-minister, and a Minister of Science and Technology, to discussing artificial intelligence and the digital economy, the question facing any business in Houston, Santiago, Mexico City, or Bogotá is simpler but just as urgent: when a potential customer asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google's AI Overviews about your service category, do they mention you by name?

That is exactly the gap MerchandisePROS's Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) service closes. While governments and large companies negotiate at the macro level how the AI infrastructure of the next decade gets built, your business is already competing today inside those same tools for your customers' attention. Our audit evaluates exactly that visibility and delivers a concrete plan to close that gap before your competition does. You can review the full detail of this and other services on our services page.

"When you see a foreign minister spend five full days talking about artificial intelligence with another government, you understand the conversation has already changed scale. Businesses that keep treating AI as a marketing experiment are going to be left out of the conversation their own customers are already having with these tools."
Diego Medina F., Founder of MerchandisePROS

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