ANTIGUA-PM defends its relationship with China

ST. JOHN” S, Antigua, CMC – Prime Minister Gaston Browne has vigorously defended Antigua and Barbuda’s relationship with China, brushing aside critics who have questioned St. John’s decision to open an embassy in the Asian country.

“We have embassies in countries where we don’t get assistance from China. What is wrong about opening an embassy in the capital from which we get this developmental assistance.”

Speaking on his weekend radio program, Browne, who led a delegation to Beijing late last month, said Beijing is making available the embassy office space to the government free of cost “for a few years” and that, for now, it does not cost the government anything.

He said an ambassador, who will be resident in China, will soon be named.

The former ambassador to Cuba and the African Union, Bruce Goodwin, was among persons questioning the sudden decision by St. John’s to open an embassy in China.

The embassy was opened during Browne’s visit to China, and Goodwin questioned whether the government had followed the proper procedures before doing so, including due diligence and a good standing check to ensure there was nothing that legally prevented the setting up of the embassy, plus vetting of the facility’s potential staff.

“Now, that is not a process that takes a day or two, or a week, or a month; it takes a while,” he said, adding, “so for us to hear suddenly … that we are going to open an embassy in Beijing right now, as the case might be, it makes you wonder, did the government go through this established procedure?

“Or do we have a situation where the Prime Minister, being as whimsical and arbitrary as he usually is, did he just get a tour around Shanghai or wherever he is and set up an embassy?” he added.

“I was always concerned with the fact that we have our embassies in Cuba, every CARICOM state now has an embassy in Cuba, and we have six independent countries here in the OECS (Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States) each of us has an embassy in Cuba, and I thought it was an unnecessary waste of money to have six OECS embassies to be there in Cuba, spending their people’s money when a single giant mission could do everything that was being done,” he said.

He suggested that Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, and Grenada could have established a joint diplomatic mission to China, which would have been more cost-effective while serving the interests of the three OECS nations.

Prime Minister Browne described China as Antigua and Barbuda’s most crucial development partner at this time and dismissed as nonsensical suggestions that the Asian country has a history of colonizing countries, despite developing a philosophy of “shared future development for all peoples.”

Prime Minister Browne said that under President Xi Jinping, China has developed a philosophy of “shared future development for all peoples” and that through this philosophy, China has made available one trillion US dollars annually in soft loans to help developing countries.

He said this is much more significant than what is provided by both the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.

“For those who are saying that China may colonize us, I ask them, what country has China ever colonized? The irony is, those countries that did, colonies,e us if they lend us money, its fineit’sf Chi; fiends us money, it’s a debt-tradebt trap illogical,” Browne told radio listeners.

He gave as an example the negotiations with the Washington-based World Bank following the destruction caused by Hurricane Irma, where the government was seeking a loan of EC$100 million (One EC dollar=US$0.37 cents) for restoration efforts on the sister island of Barbuda.

He said the World Bank offered the loan at four percent over ten years, stipulating how the money could be used.

Conversely, the airport and the seaport loans from China were valued at over EC$500 million. Browne said that each loan, the repayment was for over 20 years at two percent interest with five-year moratoria on each.
“Who is colonizing who?” he asked rhetorically.