China supplied Mexico with $133 billion in goods last year, making it the Latin American country's second-largest source of imports. Yet Chinese direct investment remains modest, and several of the biggest factories announced by Chinese companies have not been built.
WireScreen examined 60 Chinese corporate groups with investments, operations or proposed projects in Mexico and found a divide. Private companies account for most of the groups involved in manufacturing; state-owned enterprises are far more prevalent among the groups involved in rail, energy and finance projects, including the modernization of Mexico City's Metro Line 1 and a 1.3-gigawatt renewable-energy business. Chinese suppliers, Huawei among them, also built parts of Mexico's mobile networks.
Mexican investment statistics do not identify the ultimate owners of foreign companies. But ownership records do, at a time when Mexico is establishing a formal national-security review of foreign investment.
Mexico established diplomatic relations with Beijing in 1972 but has not joined the Belt and Road Initiative, and no Mexican president has visited China since 2017. Trade has grown regardless: Mexico imported $133 billion in Chinese goods in 2025 and exported about $10 billion to China. Much of the increase supplies Mexican factories. IMF researchers estimate that intermediate goods accounted for about $25 billion of the roughly $40 billion rise in imports from China between 2017 and 2023; buyers include American and other multinational manufacturers operating in Mexico. Consumer-goods imports grew faster from a smaller base — phones, screens and cars; in 2024 alone Mexico imported $5.3 billion in finished automobiles from China. Banco de México has found little evidence of goods simply passing through Mexico to the United States. Buying Chinese components does not make a factory Chinese-owned, and this study examines who owns the companies and assets operating in Mexico. On January 1, 2026, Mexico raised tariffs on 1,463 product lines from countries without a trade agreement, including rates of up to 50% on cars. China is the largest supplier affected.
Several of the largest proposed Chinese projects in Mexico never materialized, including a $5 billion battery plant, a $3.75 billion railway and a $1 billion car factory. Most completed factory investments have been smaller: appliance, furniture, tool and auto-parts plants costing $50 million to $325 million, predominantly private and still opening. Larger transactions include SPIC's acquisition of Zuma Energía, estimated at roughly $1 billion, CRRC's MXN 37.4 billion Metro Line 1 contract, and Hutchison's three decades of developing and operating port terminals. These figures describe different activities: acquiring a business, supplying a public project and investing in operating assets.
The table identifies the companies in each sector, their owners and the question that remains unanswered about their Mexican operations. The priorities reflect state control, the sensitivity of the assets, potential access to data or operating systems, and U.S. exposure. They do not indicate that a security breach has occurred.
Mexican law does not restrict Huawei Technologies de México, and Mexico's register does not say who owns it. WireScreen's records show it wholly owned, one step removed, by Huawei's Shenzhen parent — and show two kinds of U.S. restriction. The first applies to the Mexican company by name: the Commerce Department listed the Mexican company by name, effective August 19, 2019, for all items subject to U.S. export regulations, and in 2020 brought it under the Huawei foreign direct product rule. The second kind reaches it without naming it: the FCC Covered List and Section 889 restrict specified telecommunications equipment, services and federal contracting arrangements involving Huawei and its covered subsidiaries and affiliates — a narrower scope than the Entity List. Neither the Pentagon's 1260H designation nor the Justice Department indictments names the Mexican subsidiary; both name Huawei's Shenzhen parent, which WireScreen's records show as its sole owner.
What it means. Since 2019, every item subject to U.S. export regulations has needed a Commerce Department license to reach this company, and most license applications are reviewed under a presumption of denial — the item-by-item details are for export-control counsel. The company selling into Telcel's and Altán's networks is a wholly owned arm of a firm under America's heaviest non-sanctions restrictions.
Holley Group (华立集团, Hangzhou), one of the two Chinese partners in the Hofusan venture (Futong is the other), is a family company: Wang Licheng (汪力成) owns 87.5%, six individuals the rest, and his son is chairman. Its state ties are a Party-membership flag on executives and State Grid as a customer — not an owner.
State Power Investment Corporation (国家电投, Beijing), one of China's five central generators, is wholly state-owned: SASAC 90%, the National Social Security Fund 10%. Its foreign assets sit under a Hong Kong holding, China Power International.
CRRC (中国中车, Beijing; listed in Hong Kong and Shanghai) is the world's largest train maker. Its record shows SASAC as ultimate owner of 50.8% and government ownership of 52.7%; three U.S. designations and four WireScreen indicators attach to it. Its registered Mexican presence is a branch of CRRC Nanjing Puzhen — a different subsidiary from the Zhuzhou unit that leads the Metro Line 1 consortium.
The records reviewed do not identify the Mexican entity holding the Line 1 contract.
Mexico is building an investment screen — after the fact. Article 30 of its Foreign Investment Law let the investment commission block acquisitions on national-security grounds, but the power never became a working review like America's CFIUS, and there is no public record of any asset in the table being examined under it. On October 27, 2026 the Chamber of Deputies approved, unchanged, a reform the Senate passed on September 30: the defense, navy and public-security ministries and the digital agency get votes on the commission, and a foreign investor taking more than 49% of a company in a listed sensitive sector — energy, transport, communications and data among them — will need prior clearance once the commission sets an asset threshold, which it has 180 days to do after publication. The decree awaits the president's signature. The test will be whether Mexico subjects acquisitions by Chinese state companies to the kind of national-security scrutiny they would face in the United States.
The ownership chains above are four records among 20 million. WireScreen holds the registrations, shareholder lines and restriction-list flags from which chains like these are built — and keeps them current as Chinese corporate records change.
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