While China extends its reach, the United States goes it alone
As Donald Trump was being inaugurated in January 2017, I was pedaling a bicycle across Cuba with my son and a friend. After Obama had offered warmer relations to Cuba during his term, Trump had promised to again tighten up travel and cut back on interactions with Cuba. Every Cuban we spoke to was apprehensive.
Since then, Trump’s restrictions did hurt Cuba; this year the pandemic crippled an already-beleaguered economy reliant on tourism and remittances from abroad. Cuba is on the ropes.
During our 12-day sojourn, we stayed in the homes of Cubans who had set aside one or more bedrooms for lodgers. The Cubans were wonderful hosts, providing air-conditioning, good beds and bounteous breakfasts for less than $40 a night.
As we pedaled from home to home, we quickly learned that despite the United States’ 60-year embargo of the island, other nations had helped. Until its demise in 1991, the Soviet Union purchased Cuba’s sugar cane and provided much needed cash, petroleum products and technical assistance. Still on the road in Cuba are thousands of decrepit Russian tractors and Lada autos.
After the Soviets, Venezuela stepped in with oil and cash. Now Venezuela has fallen on hard times. But slowly ramping up its aid to Cuba is the U.S. rival on the world stage: China.
Cuba is famous for its pre-1960 American cars and their retro chic. We admired these “almendrones” or big almonds. A few of these classic cars are fully restored, but most are patched together, an amalgam of small Japanese engines, Russian transmissions, and Korean workarounds. They are junk.
Less known is that most new cars in Cuba are Chinese. Geely cars are the choice of the government, the newly prosperous Cubans who have benefitted from Raul Castro’s many reforms, and rental car agencies.
Geely Auto is a private Chinese company that started in 1997. In 2010, it bought the Swedish automobile manufacturer Volvo Cars and then in 2013 the iconic London Taxi company. In 2017 Geely became the majority shareholder in Volvo Trucks and the British automaker Lotus.
As we pedaled east along the northern coast of Cuba toward the international resort of Varadero, we saw an oil derrick sporting the flag of China. At a fruit stand where we bought bananas for 6 cents a pound, an older gentleman nodded his approval when he heard we were from the United States but lamented, “Everything is from China now.”
At one home, our host introduced himself as a pediatric surgeon. “I make $60 a month,” he said. “I need money.” His daughter was an engineer for the railroad. We had ridden past the ancient train station on our way into town. The locomotives and cars looked to be from the 19th century.
But not to worry. China was donating new ones.
The day Trump took office, he pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an 11-nation pact meant to rein in China’s flagrant disregard for intellectual property rules and the norms of international trade. Trump’s “America first” attitude shifted the narrative from negotiation to confrontation and culminated in rounds of tit for tat tariffs on billions of dollars of merchandise.
Has this shift improved our position with China? No. U.S. importers pay the taxes, and our trade deficit is as high as ever.
Meanwhile, China has embarked on a far-reaching plan to extend its influence around the world. Starting in 2013, it implemented the Belt and Road Initiative, the Belt referring to land-based projects in developing countries around the world, the Road referring to maritime projects. It’s a 35-year plan.
China will invest nearly $2 trillion (and also offer terms on loans) in 68 countries, building highways, railroads, pipelines, ports with container crane facilities, manufacturing facilities, power plants — in short, whatever a country needs to be able to increase its trade — with China.
Compared to the U.S. Marshall plan that helped rebuild Europe after World War II, China’s Belt and Road Initiative is seven times larger. From countries like Kyrgyzstan and Indonesia in Asia, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Zambia, Kenya in Africa, and Bolivia, Argentina, and of course Cuba in Latin America, China is no longer the insular inward-looking dragon.
Richard Nixon pulled China back into the international fold in 1972; now China is becoming a global superpower energized by its miraculous, nearly 10 percent annual growth in the last 40 years.
As Trump has spurned alliances and chanted that he will make American great again by making America first, China has been gathering its own allies around the world and building dependencies based on carrots instead of sticks. In this small world, Trump’s “America First!” is turning out to be America alone.
Brian McNeece is a retired IVC instructor and administrator. He’s a member of the International Boundary & Water Commission Colorado River Citizens Forum and a longtime observer of local history. He can be reached at bmcneece@gmail.com.