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EDITORIAL – THE FEAR OF CHINA

For several weeks the Government of The Bahamas, the business community and many Bahamians who are attentive of geopolitics expressed serious concern on the threatened increase in fees by the United States of ships owned by China bringing goods to America.  The fear was that companies like Tropical Shipping would then pass on the significant increase in freight charges, thus creating hyper-inflation in The Bahamas.


Thankfully good sense prevailed, and the Trump administration did not follow through with the disastrous policy.  The Bahamas and the Caribbean region have now been exempted from the fees on Chinese-built and Chinese-owned shipping vessels by the United States Trade Representative.


The fear of China and the influence of that nation is worrisome to the United States and many politicians are always searching for new strategies to offset Beijing’s advantages in the global south. For this reason, any investment in The Bahamas by China or Chinese businesses are looked on as suspect and as a threat to the national interests of The United States.  The bad news for The Bahamas is that many misguided Bahamians too express concern that Chinese investments are not in their interests, as they fear some sort of retribution or disapproval of the United States.  However, they must fully understand national sovereignty and our freedom to do business with all nations of the world in the interest of the people of The Bahamas.  The United States encourages foreign direct investments from Chinese entities in their country, so should we.   Indeed, some of the largest hotels in the United States are owned by China or have Chinese investors.


The great power competition between China and the U.S. requires rigorous and unsentimental assessment.


It is said that the American estimation of China has lurched from one extreme to the other.  In an article in the magazine Foreign Affairs, Kurt Campbell and Rush Doshi said: “For decades, Americans registered blistering economic growth, dominance of international trade, and growing geopolitical ambition, and anticipated the day when China might overtake a strategically distracted and politically paralyzed United States; after the 2008 financial crisis, and then especially at the height of the COVID pandemic, many observers believed that day had come.  But the pendulum swung to the other extreme only a few years later as China’s abandonment of “zero COVID” failed to restore growth.  Beijing was beset by ominous demographics, once unthinkable youth unemployment, and deepening stagnation while the United States was strengthening alliances, boasting breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and other technologies, and enjoying a booming economy with record low unemployment and record high stock markets.


“A new consensus took hold: that an aging, slowing, and increasingly less nimble China would not overtake an ascendant United States.  Washington shifted from pessimism to overconfidence.  Yet just as past bouts of defeatism were misguided, so is today’s triumphalism, which risks dangerously underestimating both the latent and actual power of the only competitor in a century whose GDP has surpassed 70 percent of that of the United States.


“On critical metrics, China has already outmatched the United States.  Economically, it boasts twice the manufacturing capacity.  Technologically, it dominates everything from electric vehicles to fourth-generation nuclear reactors and now produces more active patents and top-cited scientific publications annually.  Today the United States is at risk of being overtaken technologically, deindustrialized economically, and defeated militarily by a rival with far greater size and productive capacity.


“This is an era in which strategic advantage will once again accrue to those who can operate at scale.  China possesses scale, and the United States does not – at least not by itself.  Because its only viable path lies in coalition with others, Washington would be particularly unwise to go it alone in a complex global competition.  By retreating to a sphere of influence in the Western hemisphere, the United States would cede the rest of the world to a globally engaged China.”


It is said that a radical shift in how the United States builds and wields power is essential in a world where it no longer has the singular advantage of scale.  As China plays for time and mass, the United States and its partners must play for cohesion and collective leverage. To repurpose the warning often attributed to Benjamin Franklin: we must hang together, or we will all hang separately.

Written by Jones Bahamas

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