Communist China is beginning to rapidly increase its footprint in the Caribbean as it seeks to dethrone the United States as the world’s leading superpower.
Newsweek reported that just a couple hundred miles away from the U.S. Virgin Islands, China has started to take over the paradise island of Antigua.
China is constructing a Chinese-run special economic zone on the island that “will have its own customs and immigration formalities, a shipping port and a dedicated airline and will be able to issue passports,” the report said. “It will establish businesses offering everything from logistics to cryptocurrencies, facial surgery to ‘virology.'”
China’s encroachment on what is known as “America’s third border” has U.S. officials alarmed because China uses these developments and upgrades to a country’s infrastructure as a way to bring their own military into a new region.
“We are aware that China may use its commercial and diplomatic presence for military purposes,” a spokesperson for the Florida-based Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) told Newsweek. “In Asia, Africa and the Middle East, China has already abused commercial agreements at host-country ports for military aims; our concern is they may do the same in this region.”
The report said that Antiguan Prime Minister Gaston Browne is a huge supporter of Chinese dictator Xi Jinping and the communist nation has become Antigua’s favorite country to borrow money from. Members of Antigua’s government refused to tell the publication how much the country owed China.
He said that even the insinuation that China could be doing anything nefarious was “utter rubbish.”
“Given the breadth of investment into logistics infrastructure China has made in the Caribbean, we are concerned that China could task its state-owned enterprises and diaspora to conduct intelligence or influence operations against the U.S. and our partners in the region for military purposes,” SOUTHCOM said. “Those concerns are further heightened when you consider the Chinese Communist Party’s practice of targeting, recruiting and bribing officials.”
Gisele Isaac, chairwoman of the United Progressive Party in Antigua, warned that Browne had sold out the country to the Chinese.
“Antigua has traded its sovereignty, I think most of us believe, to China,” she said. “I think China wants a foothold in more strategic places, as a superpower. I think that this administration has become, and that’s our concern, overly reliant on one partner, that partner being China.”
“Everybody feels like their testicles are in a vise; that if you say the wrong thing, if you align yourself the wrong way, you’re putting yourself in danger,” Isaac said. “At night, I switch on my alarm and say my prayers.”
China’s new embassy on the island is such an intimidating compound that locals often stop and take photos of it, the report said.
Antigua sold China the five acres of land for its embassy for the equivalent of 40 U.S. cents.
Multiple regional officials said that they believe the “embassy” was really “an intelligence base, or a listening post,” the report said.
“We assess that any intelligence activities conducted by the People’s Republic of China in the Caribbean will almost certainly be targeted at U.S. and regional commercial and military movements in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean,” SOUTHCOM added.
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