Gyrating in the night, Trinidadian soca singer Lil Bitts’ derriere, hugged by a pair of hot pants, is center stage in efforts to bring together China and the Caribbean as Beijing seeks a more prominent presence in Washington’s back yard.
“I want to teach people how to jump and wave and wind and enjoy yourself like a Caribbean person,” she said at Beijing’s biggest Latin American and Caribbean Music Festival to date.
The four-day event, which saw bands from 15 Caribbean nations looking to twerk open pocketbooks and hearts in the world’s second-largest economy, is part of the exchanges agreed when Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) attended a 2014 summit in Brasilia.
China’s growing economic and political interests on the US doorstep are part of its “efforts to deepen trade, investment and financial ties to developing countries and regions and at the same time to further broaden ‘South-South’ cooperation,” Tsinghua University professor of international relations Matt Ferchen said.
However, efforts to reinforce those links at a “people-to-people” level have to contend with a clash of cultures from opposite sides of the globe — sometimes bordering on racism.
Lil Bitts’ Chinese translator, Li Quyi, 19, said the crowd had been lively only because there were few Chinese in attendance.
“The Chinese are too stiff and serious — they aren’t willing to move around. They would’ve all been crushed,” she said.
Outside the venue, Deng Yuanhe, a migrant construction worker, crept over to a metal fence to catch a glimpse of the first black people he had ever seen.
He liked the music, he said, but admitted: “If they came over to talk to me or approached me in the night, I’d definitely be afraid. So black, with such big eyes.”
One of the biggest projects with Chinese involvement in the Caribbean is the ill-fated US$3.5 billion Baha Mar resort complex in the Bahamas, described as the biggest commercial real-estate development in the western hemisphere.
It has yet to be completed, while its owner has filed for bankruptcy and has sued the Chinese contractor, blaming it for multiple delays. Ratings agency Standard and Poor’s has downgraded the Bahamas’ credit rating in response.
However, Bahamian ambassador to Beijing Paul Gomez insisted that “the Chinese are not viewed negatively” as a result.
Chinese companies are involved in an estimated US$250 million development of Pointe Nassau, building condominiums and performing arts centers in the heart of the capital, and have snatched up the historic British Colonial Hilton Hotel.
The former British colony, although just a short flight from the US, was turning to Chinese capital as other countries had “their own situations and austerity programs,” Gomez said. “China is looking to expand, because it has a significant population and has always been a forward-planning type of nation — not just for the next year or the next 20, but for the next 100 years.”
Other than oil and fish, the Caribbean has few of the natural resources that have driven much Chinese investment in the past, but a Beijing-based businessmen said it had other attractions.
Unlike in Africa, it was easy to get money out, he said, and it also offered a foothold in the Americas that could avoid tariffs in other markets on the continent, such as Brazil.
“When I speak to the ambassadors, I get the sense that they especially hope within this term of office to bring in some Chinese investment, because China now has the money,” said a businessman who did not want to be identified because he works with governments.
However, mega-projects such as Baha Mar risked being too high profile, he added.
“When you do something on such a large scale right on the US’s doorstep, then that has an impact, it becomes an issue between countries,” he said. “That’s no longer business, that’s politics. America has to think about balance.”
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