Ronald Sanders

The Caribbean is­land of Do­mini­ca is fast be­com­ing a liv­ing ex­am­ple of the way that Chi­na has strength­ened its in­flu­ence by mov­ing in­to coun­tries that the Unit­ed States and oth­er West­ern na­tions have ne­glect­ed. Ac­cord­ing to a white pa­per on Chi­na's for­eign aid is­sued by Chi­na's State Coun­cil on April 21, by the end of 2009, Chi­na had aid­ed 161 coun­tries and more than 30 in­ter­na­tion­al and re­gion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions, in­clud­ing 123 de­vel­op­ing coun­tries. Of them, 30 are in Asia, 51 in Africa, 18 in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, 12 in Ocea­nia and 12 in East­ern Eu­rope. Asia and Africa, home to the largest poor pop­u­la­tion, have got about 80 per cent of Chi­na's for­eign aid. While the US has been pre­oc­cu­pied with wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the so-called 'war on ter­ror,' pay­ing lit­tle at­ten­tion to its im­me­di­ate neigh­bour­hood, the Chi­nese have es­tab­lished a pres­ence through­out the Caribbean that, in large part, is re­gard­ed as ben­e­fi­cial to the peo­ple. In Do­mini­ca's case, in 2004 the gov­ern­ment there broke long-held diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions with Tai­wan to recog­nise the Peo­ple's Re­pub­lic of Chi­na and sign-on to a pol­i­cy of "one Chi­na"-the code for agree­ing with the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment that there is on­ly "One Chi­na" and Tai­wan is an in­alien­able part of it.

On the es­tab­lish­ment of diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions, the Chi­nese promised to un­der­take in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ment projects to­talling over US$100 mil­lion-all of it grants. Four projects were specif­i­cal­ly iden­ti­fied: a sports sta­di­um; a new gram­mar school; the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of the ma­jor road con­nect­ing the cap­i­tal, Roseau, to the sec­ond ma­jor town, Portsmouth; and the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of the is­land's ma­jor med­ical fa­cil­i­ty, the Princess Mar­garet Hos­pi­tal. The Chi­nese have, so far, ful­filled their un­der­tak­ings on three of these projects. The sta­di­um is built and in use, two phas­es of the school are com­plete, and work has start­ed on the Roseau-Portsmouth road, in­clud­ing the con­struc­tion of miles of wall along the sea to help con­tain coastal ero­sion. On­ly the hos­pi­tal project is pend­ing and, no one doubts that the Chi­nese will ful­fil that com­mit­ment. It should be point­ed out that Eu­ro­pean Union (EU) is al­so help­ing with the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and widen­ing of the road from Do­mini­ca's Melville Hall Air­port to Roseau. A sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence in the EU and Chi­nese road projects is that the EU is em­ploy­ing Do­mini­can work­ers while the Chi­nese use Chi­nese labour ex­clu­sive­ly.

While it might have been felt that the lo­cal pop­u­la­tion might have favoured the EU project, em­ploy­ing lo­cal labour, over the Chi­nese project that em­ploys on­ly Chi­nese, this is seem­ing­ly not the case. Al­beit a small num­ber of peo­ple, asked about the Chi­nese not em­ploy­ing lo­cal labour, re­spond­ed by say­ing that they were more in­ter­est­ed in the projects, par­tic­u­lar­ly the road, sea wall and hos­pi­tal than they were in the jobs. They added that they were get­ting the projects for free. Of course, the lat­ter ob­ser­va­tion is not en­tire­ly true. In re­turn for their eco­nom­ic as­sis­tance, the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment se­cures a "one-Chi­na pol­i­cy" from the Do­mini­can gov­ern­ment in in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions. This sup­port is repli­cat­ed from all the oth­er small, Caribbean coun­tries to which Chi­na pro­vides sim­i­lar help. The iso­la­tion of Tai­wan and its non-recog­ni­tion as a state con­tin­ues to be an im­por­tant el­e­ment of Chi­na's for­eign pol­i­cy. But, it may well be that, in the not too dis­tant fu­ture, the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment will in­sist on sup­port for oth­er-and new-as­pects of both its do­mes­tic and for­eign pol­i­cy. In fair­ness, it should be not­ed that in a White Pa­per on For­eign Aid, the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment has list­ed as one of its eight prin­ci­ples for eco­nom­ic aid and tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance to oth­er coun­tries that "the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment al­ways bases it­self on the prin­ci­ple of equal­i­ty and mu­tu­al ben­e­fit in pro­vid­ing aid to oth­er coun­tries. It nev­er re­gards such aid as a kind of uni­lat­er­al alms but as some­thing mu­tu­al."

Chi­na has been de­clar­ing that po­si­tion since 1964. An­oth­er con­se­quence of re­la­tions with Chi­na is a grad­ual in­flux of Chi­nese in­to the lo­cal pop­u­la­tion. It is strik­ing that far more re­tail shops in Roseau are now op­er­at­ed by Chi­nese than used to be the case. How­ev­er, while this com­pe­ti­tion may trou­ble lo­cal re­tail­ers, peo­ple in the street point to less ex­pen­sive prod­ucts sold by the Chi­nese that they find af­ford­able. And, in any event, while the num­ber of Chi­nese re­tail­ers-and food out­lets-is grow­ing, the over­all Chi­nese pop­u­la­tion is not yet large enough to cre­ate an out­cry. If Chi­na is wel­come in Do­mini­ca and oth­er small Caribbean coun­tries, it is be­cause Chi­na has filled a void left by the Unit­ed States and oth­er West­ern na­tions. Over the last decade, US as­sis­tance to the Caribbean re­gion has dwin­dled ex­cept in the area of in­ter­est to the US-se­cu­ri­ty in­clud­ing drug traf­fick­ing. Lit­tle at­ten­tion has been paid to the in­ter­ests of the re­gion for in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ment, im­prov­ing ed­u­ca­tion and health fa­cil­i­ties, and lay­ing the foun­da­tions for in­vest­ment that could pro­duce em­ploy­ment and tech­ni­cal know-how.

Cana­da pro­vid­ed US$1.82 mil­lion from 2008 to 2009 for projects, but its de­vel­op­ment agency, CI­DA, notes that "there are no long term bi­lat­er­al projects planned in this coun­try."

The EU col­lec­tive­ly stands out, among West­ern coun­tries, as main­tain­ing as­sis­tance to Do­mini­ca. That as­sis­tance goes be­yond resur­fac­ing the air­port road to in­clude a range of in­fra­struc­tur­al projects, in­clud­ing im­prove­ment of the Melville Hall Air­port. EU mon­ey al­so pro­vides bud­getary sup­port to the Do­mini­ca gov­ern­ment. But, while EU sup­port has un­doubt­ed­ly con­tributed to Do­mini­ca's wel­fare, the is­land's loss of its pref­er­en­tial ba­nana mar­ket in the EU sig­nif­i­cant­ly hurt its econ­o­my and put hun­dreds of small farm­ers out of busi­ness. For all this, Do­mini­ca's phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture-roads and bridges-has made great strides, and it is help­ing the coun­try's econ­o­my. Pover­ty fell from 39 per cent in 2003 to 28.8 per cent in 2009, and ab­solute pover­ty de­clined from 10 per cent in 2003 to 3.1 per cent in 2009. How­ev­er, the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund has ob­served that more than 30 per cent of the labour force has em­i­grat­ed, and per capi­ta gross do­mes­tic prod­uct of about US$4,931 is low. Nonethe­less, Do­mini­ca is an un­spoiled and nat­u­ral­ly beau­ti­ful coun­try with all the po­ten­tial of be­com­ing the world's lead­ing eco-tourism des­ti­na­tion.