During his rise to power, Brazilian president-elect Jair Bolsonaro was not afraid to borrow freely from US president Donald Trump’s playbook of unsupported claims. “China doesn’t want to buy in Brazil,” he repeated on the stump, “it wants to buy Brazil.”

This is nonsense. China ranks 13th among sovereign foreign investors in Brazil. Conflating China’s purchases of Brazilian infrastructure, mining, electricity, and oil and gas assets with a master plan to exert political control over the country is a gross misrepresentation.

But Mr Bolsonaro, who takes office next week, senses an opportunity to exploit the growing competition between China and the US in Latin America. He plans to use the fact that China is indeed expanding its influence in the region to draw Latin America into the global diplomatic battlefield. In exchange for tilting Brazil in the direction of the US, he wants concessions from the White House.