By Eduardo Baptista, Marco Aquino, Lucinda Elliott LIMA (Reuters) -Chinese President Xi Jinping launched a week-long diplomatic blitz of South America on Thursday by inaugurating a massive deep-water port in Peru,

LIMA (Reuters) - Chinese President Xi Jinping said on Thursday during talks with Peru's Dina Boluarte in Lima that China is willing to take the Chancay port, built and controlled by Chinese state-owned Cosco Shipping, as a starting point to forge a new maritime-land corridor between China and Latin America.

The port opening in Chancay underscores China’s growing clout in a region that once looked primarily to the United States for economic opportunity.

The new megaport is 992 hectares in size and creates a direct link between Shanghai and Peru and will cut shipment times down by 20 days on some routes.

Xi, in Peru alongside US President Joe Biden for the APEC summit, was opening the first Chinese-funded port in South America, a $3.5 billion complex in Chancay north of Lima that is designed to be a r

Chinese President Xi Jinping said on Thursday during talks with Peru's Dina Boluarte in Lima that China is willing to take the Chancay port, built and controlled by Chinese state-owned Cosco Shipping,

On the edge of Peru’s coastal desert, a remote fishing town where a third of all residents have no running water is being transformed into a huge deep-water port to cash in on the inexorable rise of Chinese interest in resource-rich South America.