The worldwide nature of U.S.-China rivalry has been thrust back into the spotlight after Biden administration officials said a Chinese electronic eavesdropping station was being run out of Cuba since at least 2019—an allegation denied by Havana and Beijing.
Whatever the case in Cuba, China’s presence in other Caribbean states dotted on the threshold of the United States has been growing rapidly, just as Beijing has expanded its reach around the world, using overt and covert diplomacy, trade, aid and investment under its Belt and Road infrastructure initiative.
“China’s activities in Latin America and the Caribbean fit into the Communist Party’s overarching, global economic and military framework. Communist Party leaders have made two important things clear in their overall strategy—China must be prepared to fight and win wars, and they will expand their military to safeguard the ceaseless expansion of their overseas interests,” said Jonathan Ward, author of The Decisive Decade: American Grand Strategy for Triumph Over China.
“Beijing has demonstrated that the Belt and Road Initiative is both an economic and a military project. China’s trade with Latin American nations has burgeoned over the past two decades, and the Caribbean is an area where relatively small amounts of capital can purchase significant influence,” Ward told Newsweek.
Countries from the Bahamas to Barbados and Jamaica to Trinidad and Tobago have all been among the major beneficiaries of Chinese loans and investment that total tens of billions of dollars.
Reports of the alleged Cuba spy station came at an inopportune time for the White House, which was seeking to resume high-level dialogue with China’s leaders. Antony Blinken’s scheduled trip to Beijing will make him the first U.S. secretary of state to visit the country in nearly five years, after travel plans in early February were scuppered by another incident: a suspected Chinese spy balloon’s flight over U.S. airspace.
