Editorial | Foreign policy and China

Foreign policy has figured little, so far, in the simmering campaign for Jamaica’s general election, which has to be held by the end this year.

But it’s a proverbial elephant in the room, particularly in how Jamaica navigates its relationships with the United States and China. The question can’t be ignored for much longer, especially after last week’s swing through three Caribbean capitals, including Kingston, by the US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio.

Mr Rubio was generally affable, appearing willing to cut regional countries some slack to continue, with perhaps minor tweaks, their government-to-government programme of using Cuban doctors and nurses in their health systems. Mr Rubio had characterised the scheme as human trafficking and threatened sanctions, including the withdrawal of US travel visas, against officials involved in it.

The secretary of state also appeared sympathetic to the concerns of Caribbean governments, which he promised to take back to Washington, for the potential cost to their economies if the Trump administration goes through with its plan to impose high levies on Chinese-built ships that enter US ports. Much of the goods imported to the region are shipped on vessels made in China and whose first call is to US ports. The upshot, therefore, is that the price of goods, including food, imported by the region, would rise.

The US sees the idea as part of its larger strategy to resuscitate American manufacturing, in this case shipbuilding, where China now controls 50 per cent of global production by tonnage. In America, once a shipbuilding and commercial shipping powerhouse, the industry is limping. US commercial vessels now transport less than one per cent of the world’s tonnage.

DISPLEASURE

However, in Kingston and Paramaribo, the Surinamese capital, Mr Rubio left little doubt of America’s displeasure at China’s increasing prominence in the region, as Beijing provides loans for infrastructure and its firms have made commercial investments and are hired for construction projects. He repeated the argument about China inveigling developing countries into debt traps, claimed that Chinese builders do shoddy work on infrastructure projects, including a highway on which he drove in Guyana, and warned that American firms were less likely to come to countries where Chinese technology formed the backbone of their telecommunications infrastructure. The Americans would fear the theft of their industrial secrets.

The warning about telecoms was a reprise of a campaign, started during the first Trump administration and continued under Joe Biden, when the US told its western allies to bar the Chinese firm, Huawei, from developing their 5G networks. Indeed, in late 2021, Donald Tapia, Mr Trump’s ambassador on the island at the time, publicly accused China of eavesdropping on Jamaica via the network of the mobile telephone company, Digicel.

In his Jamaica spiel, Mr Rubio claimed that the US’s problem was not with Chinese investments, and in Suriname he said America wasn’t concerned with “spheres of influence”, which presumably implies that the United States has no problem with China and its firms being active in the Western Hemisphere.

“Our problem is predatory practices …,” he said. “... And oftentimes it (Chinese projects) comes attached with a huge loan that can never be repaid, and now they hold it over your head forever.”

In Suriname, Mr Rubio warned: “If you’re going to have a telecommunications system that is controlled by Chinese companies, you’re going to have trouble having American investors come in.

“ …They don’t want all their stuff yanked out by some back door that the Chinese have installed in their telecommunications system.”

HIT BACK

It is not surprising that Beijing hit back through its embassies in Guyana and Kingston, pointing out the value of China’s no-strings relations with Caribbean countries.

Suriname president Chand Santokhi defended his country’s engagement with China but stressed that Paramaribo was looking for investors from everywhere. Which was essentially the argument made by Prime Minister Andrew Holness in a September 2023 speech at the opening of the 23-kilometre extension of a highway with a US$188 million loan from China.

“Unlike those who would want to create a false impression about Jamaica and our international development relationship with China, it is false,” Mr Holness said. “Jamaica has taken a strategic approach to develop its infrastructure, and we partner with those who want to help us, and we are willing to partner with all countries in the world that come genuinely to assist our development.”

Given his posture, such as in his threat to retake the Panama Canal, President Trump is likely to be more aggressive this time round on China-Caribbean relations.

Jamaica, which benefited immensely from Chinese loans and gifts for infrastructure projects when it was shut out of global financial markets, can’t, if it takes the long view, just buckle. The current situation demands skilled diplomacy. And its best chance of success is if there is political consensus on key issues of foreign policy.

This is a matter to which the political Opposition, judging by its personnel in the foreign policy portfolio, hasn’t given a lot of thought. That must be addressed.

At the same time, Jamaica should seek to ground with its partners in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) on the US-China question.