Not long after that, Grenada—still grappling with the legacy of the communist takeover that prompted U.S. military intervention in 1983—turned its back on the staunch anti-communism of the Reagan era to open its arms to China in 2005. Meanwhile, beginning when Chile’s socialist president Salvador Allende formally recognized the PRC in 1970, the other South American powers switched over one by one throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Today Paraguay is the lone holdout on that continent against China’s diplomatic overtures.