China’s growing presence in the Western Hemisphere is a threat to the United States, the U.S. State Department has told Newsweek in unusually stark comments.

America’s top diplomat, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, has said that the U.S. is not ready to accept greater Chinese influence in the Americas, the spokesperson said. “As stated by Secretary Rubio, we can’t live in a world in which China has more influence and more presence than we do in our region. The expanding role of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the Western Hemisphere threatens U.S. interests.”

The comments were made in response to queries from Newsweek about a planned joint space observatory in Chile between Chinese state scientific organizations and a private Chilean university. Newsweek detailed the observatory at Cerro Ventarrones in the Atacama Desert last December, reporting that parts of the project could be beyond the control of the Chilean authorities and that it could have dual-use—both civilian and military—purposes. This week the Chilean government told Newsweek that it was reviewing the agreement.

The State Department’s comments bring into sharp focus an increasingly fierce global competition for influence. China has expanded fast in the region, building or acquiring Latin American critical infrastructure such as ports including in Panama and Peru, roads, dams, electricity grids, even expanding its space capabilities with at least 16 facilities in the region, according to Newsweek research. Some Latin American countries are economically dependent on China. Chile sends 40 percent of its exports to China including copper, fish and cherries.

The Western Hemisphere encompasses a vast region stretching from Cape Horn at the southern end of the South American continent through to the Caribbean, Central America, the United States, Canada and Greenland.

The Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C., denied that China was engaging in geopolitical competition by expanding its presence in a region that traditionally has been under American influence.

“China-LAC cooperation is South-South cooperation,” the embassy told Newsweek in an email, referring to Latin American and the Caribbean. “There is only mutual support in this cooperation, no geopolitical calculations. In its engagement with LAC countries, China follows the principles of equality and mutual benefit, and never seeks sphere of influence or targets any party,” an embassy spokesperson said.

“What people in LAC countries want is to build their own home, not to become someone’s backyard; what they aspire to is independence and self-decision, not the Monroe Doctrine,” the Chinese embassy said.

President James Monroe declared in 1823 that the Americas were within the U.S.’s sphere of influence. At the time, the target of the geopolitical statement was Europe, which had established colonies throughout the region.

President Donald Trump has drawn attention to America’s hemispheric interests with statements that the U.S. seeks greater influence, even ownership, of Greenland, a Danish territory, and that he intends to regain American control of the Panama Canal, where strategic ports at either end belong to Hong Kong’s Hutchison Ports.

In March, a surprise announcement that an investment group led by the American company BlackRock would buy 43 ports in 23 countries that belonged to Hutchison—including two at either end of the Panama Canal—infuriated the Chinese government, which has hit back with a series of strident criticisms of the sale, of Hutchison, and of its 96-year-old founder, Hong Kong magnate Li Ka-shing. The comments, carried in Chinese state-owned media and on government websites, indicate Beijing is exerting massive pressure on Li not to sell.

“Stop the transaction—don’t lose something big because of something small,” read the headline of one of two articles published on Friday by Ta Kung Pao, a state-owned Chinese newspaper based in Hong Kong, in another apparent warning to Li and Hutchison.

Asked to comment on the tussle over the Panama ports, the Chinese embassy spokesperson said: “Let me stress more broadly that China firmly opposes moves that infringe on and undermine other countries’ legitimate rights and interests through economic coercion, hegemonism and bullying.”

Beijing says that its global port acquisitions are to facilitate its Belt and Road Initiative for global commerce and development and are not strategic in nature.