This article argues that China has used two mechanisms to build trust as a way to counteract the uncertainties and perception of risk produced by its growing hegemony in Latin America. On the one hand, China has reshaped its own identity by narrowing it to its market dimension. On the other, it has embarked in a process of institutionalisation of its commercial relations in order to portray itself as an actor playing by the rules of the open global economic market and
international insertion. In this scenario, the 2006 Sino –Chilean Free Trade Agreement– the first that China has ever signed with a western country, emerges as a perfect case to illustrate China’s benign influence in Latin America, therefore making the analysis of it in the broader context of the rise of Chinese power in the region a productive endeavour.