Between July and September 2026, scientific and technological cooperation between Mexico and China gained new momentum. Rosaura Ruiz Gutiérrez, head of Mexico’s Secretariat of Science, Humanities, Technology, and Innovation (Secihti), first met with Chinese Ambassador to Mexico Chen Daojiang and later co-chaired, alongside Chinese Minister of Science and Technology Yin Hejun, the Ninth Meeting of the Science and Technology Subcommittee of the Mexico-China Permanent Binational Commission. Since the mechanism was established in 2004, no Chinese minister of science and technology had personally participated in its meetings.
At the meeting, the two governments signed a memorandum of understanding to expand cooperation among universities, public institutions, and companies in research, digital infrastructure, advanced technology transfer, and public-private partnerships. The areas discussed included artificial intelligence, high-performance computing, robotics, electromobility, and semiconductors. Secihti has also acknowledged that it is exploring opportunities to work with Huawei on high-performance computing, AI, and specialized talent development.
Between Washington and Beijing
These developments come at a particularly difficult moment in Mexico’s relationship with the United States, which is spilling over into China-Mexico relations.
Since January, the Mexican government has imposed new tariffs on 1,463 product categories originating in countries with which Mexico has no free trade agreement. Although China is not the only country affected, it has borne much of the impact: between January and May, Chinese imports covered by these measures fell by 28.4 percent. In sectors such as footwear and passenger vehicles, the declines reached 59 percent and 35 percent, respectively.
Economy Secretary Marcelo Ebrard has defended these measures as a way to protect Mexican industry. Yet they are difficult to separate from Washington’s pressure over China’s economic presence in Mexico and the upcoming USMCA review. On this issue, Claudia Sheinbaum’s government appears to have chosen to partially accommodate Trump in order to preserve an economic relationship that is exceedingly difficult to replace.
At the same time, Mexico has sought closer political ties with China amid poor treatment from the United States. On September 4, U.S. President Donald Trump declared from the Oval Office that Mexico had “nothing that we really need,” beyond “spicy tamales, tomatoes, a couple of things.”
Just three days later, Mexico’s Foreign Secretary Roberto Velasco traveled to Beijing to meet with Wang Yi. There, the Chinese foreign minister expressed support for Mexico against “foreign interference” and argued that China-Mexico relations “are not directed at any third party and should not be affected by any third party.” Neither government explicitly mentioned the United States, but both appeared to have it very much in mind.
There is nothing inherently problematic about Mexico seeking to diversify its international relations. If anything, the uncertainty created by Trump demonstrates the risks of depending excessively on a single partner. But if the Mexican government is trying to reduce commercial frictions with Washington, how should we interpret its simultaneous deepening of ties with Beijing in some of the sectors most sensitive to U.S. security concerns?
The Risks of Technology Cooperation
Recent exchanges between Secihti and its Chinese counterparts reveal at least three particularly problematic areas. The first concerns the technologies chosen for deeper cooperation. Artificial intelligence, semiconductors, and high-performance computing – all explicitly discussed during these meetings – are not ordinary industries. They are at the heart of the China-U.S. competition to achieve greater technological autonomy, control supply chains, and preserve industrial and military advantages. Washington has therefore spent much of the past decade restricting China’s access to advanced chips and other dual-use technologies.
The second concerns Huawei. Before the Subcommittee meeting, Secihti itself announced that it was exploring cooperation with the Chinese company in high-performance computing, AI, and specialized talent development. Since the first Trump administration, Huawei has been at the center of U.S. restrictions on Chinese technology over security and espionage concerns. These concerns have even generated tensions between Washington and allied governments over Chinese companies’ participation in 5G networks and other digital infrastructure.
Finally, Secihti’s exchanges with Chinese representatives have placed considerable emphasis on student and researcher mobility, as well as cooperation among universities, research centers, and companies. Promoting these exchanges is perfectly legitimate and can yield real benefits. Yet when academic cooperation overlaps with dual-use technologies, it requires safeguards different from those of conventional academic exchange. The U.S. Congress has warned about ties between certain Chinese universities and scientific programs and Beijing’s “military-civil fusion” strategy, through which advances developed in civilian settings can contribute to military capabilities.
This does not make every Chinese student or researcher a security risk – a conclusion that would be both unfair and absurd. But it does require distinguishing between cooperation on agricultural pests – as the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences already do – and transferring knowledge related to semiconductors, AI, or high-performance computing. Precisely because Secihti’s new agenda encompasses both kinds of cooperation, Mexico should be able to tell the difference.
It is possible, of course, that many of these agreements will never reach the scale suggested by official statements. Latin America’s experience shows that many memorandums signed with China produce more declarations and photo opportunities than lasting projects. Even so, it is striking that the priorities discussed in Secihti’s exchanges closely resemble sectors promoted by Beijing’s industrial policy over the past decade, from Made in China 2025 to its policy documents on Latin America and the Caribbean.
Diversifying Without Creating New Dependencies
Mexico, then, faces a problem that has less to do with its right to cooperate with China than with the coherence of its international strategy. It is contradictory to limit China’s economic presence in order to reduce friction with Washington while simultaneously deepening ties with Beijing in sectors that are far more sensitive to the United States.
China, moreover, is not Mexico’s only option for diversification. The modernized Mexico-European Union Global Agreement would allow more than 95 percent of Mexican exports to enter tariff-free into a market of 450 million people. Mexico could also make better use of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) or revitalize the Pacific Alliance, whose enlargement has remained stalled, among other reasons, by the diplomatic rupture with Ecuador following the 2024 raid on the Mexican Embassy in Quito. More ambitious commercial ties with Mercosur could complement these efforts.
None of these alternatives will replace the United States – the destination of more than 80 percent of Mexican exports. Nor could China, for that matter. But stronger ties with Europe, the Asia-Pacific, and Latin America could gradually reduce Mexico’s dependence without placing the country in the middle of the most contentious areas of China-U.S. competition.
Autonomy does not mean replacing one dependency with another, much less antagonizing Washington simply to demonstrate that Mexico can do so. Maintaining close relations with China is perfectly compatible with an independent foreign policy, but Mexico cannot ignore the costs of cooperation in sensitive areas. Trading with China is not the same as partnering with Beijing on digital infrastructure, semiconductors, or artificial intelligence. In an era of great power competition, diversification requires knowing not only whom to engage with, but also how far – and in what areas – to do so.