#BTEditorial – Still much mystery about China’s plans

Barbados and China recently celebrated their decades of  connections at the cultural, diplomatic and economic levels.

Some of the landmark structures which were the result of Chinese financing and labour are dotted across the island and they have been undertaken under both major political parties.

Some of these landmarks include the Barbados Tourism and Investment Inc (BTII)-operated multi-level carpark and office complex now housing the Immigration Department.

Other projects include the Wildey Gymnasium and the Warrens Office Complex, while more recent Chinese funded initiatives include the new Wyndham Sam Lord’s Castle hotel and major road rehabilitation in the rural parishes of St Joseph and St Andrew.

The Chinese government has also been a key partner in the supply of electric buses for the state-operated Transport Board.   

Despite the strong relationship, most Barbadians are still puzzled, if not latently suspicious about the Chinese government’s benevolence. Why has the Asian powerhouse been so generous, even noble in its gifts to the people of Barbados?

We refer to the Chinese government in this editorial simply because it is extremely difficult to distinguish what is genuinely Chinese private sector, state-sponsored or just outright government actors.

The Chinese government is not known for transparency and information sharing about its activities and political plans. However, we can assess from observing its activities in other countries and regions that there is no such thing as a free lunch. As our local calypso exponents remind us, if we “bring drinks” then “somebody will pay”.

As the priorities of developed nations such as the United States of America shift away from the Caribbean, a clear vacuum has been created and it is being filled by China. The Chinese have leveraged their powerful economic position as one of the world’s largest economies.

With an estimated gross domestic product (GDP) of US$19.373 trillion as at December 31, 2022, and GDP growth in 2021 of 8.4 percent and 3.0 percent in 2022, the Chinese economy is second only to the USA.

A recent paper titled, At a Crossroads: Chinese Development Finance to Latin America and the Caribbean, 2022 shows that Barbados has been among the top recipients of funding  from Chinese development financial institutions (DFIs) through financing for projects from the China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China.

Though there was a significant decline during the years of the COVID-19 pandemic, an examination undertaken by the Inter-American Dialogue and the Boston University Global Development Policy Centre offered some interesting insights in its Chinese Loans to Latin America and the Caribbean (CLLAC) Database.

In a joint report by Margaret Myers and Rebecca Ray, we learned that three loans totalling US$813 million were extended to Barbados, Guyana and Brazil.

“Though still lending at low rates to Latin America and Caribbean governments, China’s development financing institutions would appear to be engaging the region with renewed interest,” Myers and Ray highlighted.

In an age of conspiracy theories and disinformation, one must carefully examine all information presented, paying close attention to the origin of that information, the political and other motives behind the sources.

Frankly, despite bank rolling so many important projects in Barbados and the region, the Chinese have not done a very good job at fully explaining their motives and reasoning behind the financial injections into our economies.

It would be a paradigm shift for the communist government to become open and completely transparent about what it was doing or planning.

At the same time, it is important to note that there are many areas of misunderstanding about China, its government, and people.

In a 2021 feature in the Harvard Business Review, authors Rana Mitter and Elsbeth Johnson wrote: “Many Western politicians and business executives still don’t get China. Believing, for example, that political freedom would follow the new economic freedoms, they wrongly assumed that China’s internet would be similar to the freewheeling and often politically disruptive version developed in the West. And believing that China’s economic growth would have to be built on the same foundations as those in the West, many failed to envisage the Chinese state’s continuing role as investor, regulator, and intellectual property owner.”

What we can glean is that China benefits from not being fully understood and sees value in the mystery that surrounds it.