Dear Editor,
In a recent commentary on the latest CARICOM meeting with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the author briefly noted that Washington’s renewed focus on the Caribbean has a great deal to do with China’s growing footprint in the region. That passing remark provoked a familiar question: “What is China really up to?” The suspicion is that something must be wrong whenever Beijing finances a port, a road or a solar farm.
Yet if the starting point is the realities of Caribbean and other small island developing states (SIDS), a different interpretation emerges. The more uncomfortable story is less about China misbehaving and more about others failing, for decades, to deliver what these countries have clearly said they need.
Across SIDS, the diagnosis is well established. These states are among the most climate vulnerable in the world, yet many are classified as middle or high income, which makes access to concessional finance and debt relief extremely difficult.
They often pay more in debt service than they receive in climate finance, while the annual adaptation finance gap runs into billions of dollars.
One hurricane can wipe out the equivalent of a year’s GDP overnight. Leaders have said bluntly that the global financial system was never designed with their economies in mind.
Even when money exists on paper, getting to it is a maze. Accessing climate and development funds means high transaction cost, long delays and a bias toward large projects and loan based instruments that deepen already heavy debt burdens.
Many development banks and philanthropies still perceive small islands as “high risk, low scale” clients: too small to matter, too complex to fit standard project models. In practice, countries on the frontlines of climate change are kept at the back of the financing line. In that context, it is hardly surprising that Caribbean and other small island governments are paying close attention to what China puts on the table.
Over the past 15 years, Chinese state lenders and firms have become major players in Latin American and Caribbean infrastructure and energy, extending tens of billions of dollars across the region and backing ports, transport links and power projects. Globally, the Belt and Road Initiative has driven record levels of overseas construction and investment, with a growing share in renewable and “green” sectors.
For small states struggling to finance resilient infrastructure, these are not abstractions; they are potential roads, hospitals, fibre optic cables and solar parks that domestic budgets and traditional partners have not delivered at scale.
China has also branded itself as a demand driven, South-South partner. Its official discourse stresses mutual benefit, non interference and respect for national development plans. Where traditional donors often favour small, incremental projects and heavy policy dialogue, China has been prepared to discuss larger, more visible infrastructure packages that sit squarely on ministers’ priority lists. In market terms, Beijing has chosen a segment others under served: big, executable investments in countries with high needs and few alternatives.
At this point a basic question arises, one that sits in the background of any CARICOM-US conversation about “competition” in the region. Nations, just like firms, operate in a world of competition for market share – of influence, trade, investment and ideas. Competition and diversification are applauded when private companies or Western governments vie for contracts.
Why should that same competitive logic suddenly be suspect when the player is China? If it is considered healthy for European or American actors to fight for infrastructure or telecoms deals in the Caribbean, on what principled basis is similar behaviour by China treated as inherently improper?
None of this means the risks are imaginary. There are serious concerns about debt sustainability, opaque contracts, environmental and social safeguards, and the dangers of leaning too heavily on any single partner – China, the United States, Europe or anyone else for that matter.
The wider region already offers examples of underperforming projects, cost overruns and governance strains linked to external financing. Caribbean institutions and citizens are right to demand that every deal – Chinese or otherwise – meet tests of value for money, resilience and sovereignty.
But acknowledging risk is not the same as declaring China’s role illegitimate. Its growing presence is better read as a symptom of a deeper structural problem: a persistent mismatch between what the traditional aid and climate finance system offers and what small, vulnerable economies actually need.
The 2024 SIDS conference in Antigua and Barbuda, for example, called for a retooled global financial architecture, for vulnerability based access to concessional resources and for far more adaptation and transformation finance. These are moderate asks: align rules with the realities of economies whose per capita income hides extreme exposure to shocks.
Progress has been sluggish. In that vacuum, China and a few others have moved faster to respond to infrastructure and connectivity gaps in small states.
Seen from this angle, the real scandal is not that China is willing to finance ports, hospitals or solar plants in small islands. It is that, after decades of speeches about shared vulnerability and climate justice, it took so long for anyone to respond at scale to clearly articulated needs.
China’s rise in the development marketplace exposes a hard truth: the current menu of instruments from traditional donors and institutions still does not match the risk profiles, fiscal constraints and project realities of SIDS.
The strategic question for Caribbean and other small island governments – on display in every encounter with Washington, Beijing or Brussels – is therefore not “China or the West?” but “How do we use competition to get a better deal from all of them?” That means insisting on transparency and strong safeguards in Chinese backed projects, while pushing multilateral and traditional partners to modernise their products: more grants and guarantees for resilience, simpler procedures, and tools tailored to small administrations and small but urgent projects.
For vulnerable island societies, the imperative is to stay clear eyed about every external partner and to defend long term interests with discipline. But they should also reject narratives that cast them as naïve pawns in other people’s geopolitical games.
When China steps into spaces others have left empty, it is not automatically breaking the rules. More often, it is behaving like any competitive state in a crowded marketplace – reading demand, adjusting its offer, and reminding the rest of the world that needs ignored for too long will always find a new supplier.
Michael Willem
Dear Editor,
In Dutch we say "waterdicht " and in English "airtight". Anyone can go back to the letters that I have written to you and they will not be able to show me where I have insulted anyone. When I declare anything I am always open to be corrected. Someone sent me the 'talk' of the prime minister in which he elaborated on the density of the traffic.
Even though criticizing politicians and other government officials is fair game I will not react the way some people suggested. What I will mention though is that, that part of his talk was not airtight.
The prime minister who gave a dissertation on the reasons for the density of the traffic and along with that the amount of main roads leading to and through the different districts and villages, either omitted or forgot to mention one of the reasons that one of every two residents of Sint Maarten is able to purchase a motor vehicle. Which is that more and more both auto dealers and banks are making it easier for citizens to be able to buy a motor vehicle. It reminds me of campaigning.
I will not state that this was done intentionally, but history will show that too often we neglect or forget to mention the affluent in not so pleasant matters. Many years ago on Mamma's Pearls program, traffic congestion was also a topic. At that time I suggested 'car pooling'. Another caller responded "If I leave my car home and my wife who don't have a driver's licence, take in sick, what you want me to do?"
I answered him: "That is why we have an ambulance and police departments". For many years, whoever was in government knew and never stop knowing that the motorised traffic was intensifying. I and a great deal of your readers know this because I have written to you about it on several occasions.
That was not good enough. All of a sudden after March 13th, we have to look how we going to get over Marigothill. My father used to tell us "If you can't find a solution for something, do not criticize it." I believe that part of the solution could be, have different departments and entities, work night hours. Heavy equipment and trailer trucks should work from 6pm to 6am and nobody holding anybody hostage with pay for night hours.
Also government should seriously look into the maximum size of all buses, regular as well as tour buses and school buses. And of course regulate public transportation, so that inhabitants of all villages have access to public transportation. Intensify the control on gypsies.
Russell A SIMMONS
Dear Editor,
In recent times we have been hearing the curious notion being peddled that it is not necessary for Caribbean Community Caricom member states to have agreement or convergence on their foreign policy positions, and that – in the currently prevailing precarious geo-political condition – it is, in fact, a strength for Caricom member states to pursue separate and different foreign policy positions.
Well, I beg to differ, and I am fortified in my contrary opinion by the actual text of our Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas! The Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas clearly outlines what is expected of our Caribbean Community in the arena of foreign affairs when it provides as follows:
Article 6 – Objectives of the Community
The Community shall have the following objectives:
(g) the achievement of a greater measure of economic leverage and effectiveness of Member States in dealing with third States, groups of States and entities of any description;
(h) enhanced co-ordination of Member States’ foreign and foreign economic policies.
Article 16 – The Council for Foreign and Community Relations (COFCOR)
3. COFCOR shall:
(b) establish measures to co-ordinate the foreign policies of the Member States of the Community, including proposals for joint representation, and seek to ensure, as far as practicable, the adoption of Community positions on major hemispheric and international issues;
(c) co-ordinate the positions of the Member States in inter-governmental organisations in whose activities such States participate.
So it is very clear from the foregoing that the framers of our Treaty considered that having a collective or unified Caricom position or policy in relation to foreign powers or entities was a good and desirable thing that would enhance our strength and effectiveness in dealing with said foreign powers and entities.
In fact, this is an “ancient” Caricom insight that is rooted in the seminal October 1972 decision of the four founder-members of Caricom – Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago, Guyana and Barbados – to, simultaneously, establish Caricom, and to equip it with a coordinated foreign policy.
Back then, in the face of a formidable USA and Organisation of American States (OAS) policy to impose an ironclad policy of isolation on “revolutionary Cuba”, the Prime Ministers of the four founder-members of Caricom stated as follows:
“The independent English-speaking Caribbean states, exercising their sovereign right to enter into relations with any other sovereign states, and pursuing their determination to seek regional solidarity and to achieve meaningful and comprehensive cooperation among all Caribbean countries will seek the early establishment of relations with Cuba.
To this end, the independent English-speaking Caribbean states will act together on the basis of agreed principles.”
And not only did the four Caricom founder-members go on to establish diplomatic, trade and cultural relations with Cuba on December 8, 1972, but because they did so, not as separate nations, but as a seamless, unified quartet, their position was imbued with the strength that was required to effectively and safely defy the USA and OAS and to establish a progressive precedent that a multitude of other nations followed in the subsequent years!
So, the question that now arises is: “Why hasn’t this well-established principle and modus operandi been followed by so many of our Caricom nations in dealing with the current vexed question of how to respond to the USA and its unreasonable and illegitimate demand to terminate our various medical cooperation programmes with Cuba?”
When the new Trump administration first advanced this outrageous demand in March 2025, there was a commonality of response from several of our heads of government. Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell of Grenada publicly asserted that capitulating to such a demand was out of the question, and, in separate statements, Prime Ministers Gonsalves, Rowley and Mottley made it clear that they resolved to stand firm in defence of their nations’ sovereign right to engage Cuban health professionals, even if it meant suffering the loss of their visas to travel to the USA.
Indeed, Prime Minister Mottley’s statement, delivered from the Barbados House of Assembly, was perhaps the most instructive of them all, and deserves to be quoted in some detail:
“Barbados does not currently have Cuban medical staff or nurses, but I would be the first to go to the line and to tell you that we could not get through the pandemic without the Cuban nurses and the Cuban doctors. I will also be the first to tell you that we paid them the same thing we paid Bajans, and that the notion that we were involved in human trafficking by engaging with the Cuban nurses was fully repudiated and rejected by us.
Now, I don’t believe that we have to shout across the seas, but I am prepared, like others in this region, that if we cannot reach a sensible agreement on this matter, then if the cost of it is the loss of my visa to the US, then so be it. But what matters to us is principles.
We don’t have to shout, but we can be resolute. And I therefore look forward to standing with my Caricom brothers to be able to ensure that we explain that what the Cubans have been able to do for us – far from approximating itself to human trafficking – has been to save lives and limbs and sight for many a Caribbean person.”
What Prime Minister Mottley was saying here was that our Caricom Member States should come together and not only deal with the matter collectively, but that our approach should be to hold firm to our principles and to reject the illicit and unreasonable US demand.
Indeed, Prime Minister Mottley went so far as to assert that even though Barbados does not currently have a Cuban Medical Cooperation programme and was therefore not facing the US demands and threats, that she would be willing to stand in unity on the issue with her fellow Caricom Prime Ministers – even if that stance resulted in her being stripped of her US visa by the US government! In other words, she was counselling a unified Caricom approach, in keeping with articles 6 and 16 of the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas.
Unfortunately, Prime Minister Mottley’s wise counsel does not seem to have prevailed, and we have the spectacle of individual Caricom states attempting to negotiate with the powerful US administration on their own. The predictable result has been either the outright termination or the substantial rolling back of several of the medical cooperation programmes.
In light of the clear guidance from our Treaty, and the powerful message that still emanates from the historic decision of October 1972, this is very regrettable.
All of us in the Caribbean Community well know the phrase – “United we stand, divided we fall”. It is a wise saying that originates with the ancient African griot known as Aesop, and is to be found in Aesop’s fable “The Four Oxen and the Lion” (circa 6th century BC). It is also a nugget of biblical wisdom that was conveyed to us by the Apostle Mark in the form of “A house divided against itself cannot stand” (Mark 3:25). And for those of us who are neither historians nor practising Christians, we surely know this wise saying from the 1970s popular song, “United We Stand”, by the musical group named Brotherhood of Man.
My Caricom brothers and sisters: Let us reclaim and cleave to this timeless wisdom. Whenever we in Caricom have to deal with powerful outside forces intent on having their way with us, let us make every possible effort to develop a united or unified position.
And let us bear in mind that “unity is not necessarily unanimity”. As our recently inaugurated Caricom Full Free Movement Regime has demonstrated, we can have effective unity without having every single Member State on board.
In the current circumstances that we face in Caricom, it may prove to be difficult to achieve unanimity on the thorny geo-political issues of the day, but let that not prevent us from determinedly searching for and achieving the greatest state of unity that we are capable of achieving.
And let us go forward in this current era with the clear understanding that “1 from 10 no longer leaves 0”.
DAVID COMISSIONG
Citizen of the Caribbean Community
Dear Editor,
You can believe me that I am not the smartest person. But for forty-one years I did the best job in the world. That job afforded me the opportunity to be involved in every last thing. My father pointed that out to me at one time and I disputed it until he asked me if I can arrest the queen.
After giving it some thought I mentioned the Attorney General. He said I expected you to go there but the Attorney General will not arrest her, he would send you to arrest the queen and you will bring her to him. Where am I going with this?
I believe that if someone approaches me to do no matter what, legally I have to be disciplined enough to know whether I am in a position to do it or not. So when I hear rumours that the present Chief of Police will be appointed Secretary General (a.i.) to the Minister of Justice I said to myself, when is it going to stop?
Because of past experience and because I have had to say “I told you so”, let me start by saying “things don’t go so”. Those two positions/functions are not compatible.
I can understand that the minister of justice and the chief commissioner want the same results, but the chief commissioner should not be the advisor. The chief commissioner will be advising the minister of justice on what steps to take against the chief commissioner and his police force. I have seen strange things happen here, so I hope this does not happen.
Russell A SIMMONS
Dear Editor,
In recent times we have been hearing the curious notion being peddled that it is not necessary for Caribbean Community Caricom member states to have agreement or convergence on their foreign policy positions, and that – in the currently prevailing precarious geo-political condition – it is, in fact, a strength for Caricom member states to pursue separate and different foreign policy positions.
Well, I beg to differ, and I am fortified in my contrary opinion by the actual text of our Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas! The Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas clearly outlines what is expected of our Caribbean Community in the arena of foreign affairs when it provides as follows:
Article 6 – Objectives of the Community
The Community shall have the following objectives:
(g) the achievement of a greater measure of economic leverage and effectiveness of Member States in dealing with third States, groups of States and entities of any description;
(h) enhanced co-ordination of Member States’ foreign and foreign economic policies.
Article 16 – The Council for Foreign and Community Relations (COFCOR)
3. COFCOR shall:
(b) establish measures to co-ordinate the foreign policies of the Member States of the Community, including proposals for joint representation, and seek to ensure, as far as practicable, the adoption of Community positions on major hemispheric and international issues;
(c) co-ordinate the positions of the Member States in inter-governmental organisations in whose activities such States participate.
So it is very clear from the foregoing that the framers of our Treaty considered that having a collective or unified Caricom position or policy in relation to foreign powers or entities was a good and desirable thing that would enhance our strength and effectiveness in dealing with said foreign powers and entities.
In fact, this is an “ancient” Caricom insight that is rooted in the seminal October 1972 decision of the four founder-members of Caricom – Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago, Guyana and Barbados – to, simultaneously, establish Caricom, and to equip it with a coordinated foreign policy.
Back then, in the face of a formidable USA and Organisation of American States (OAS) policy to impose an ironclad policy of isolation on “revolutionary Cuba”, the Prime Ministers of the four founder-members of Caricom stated as follows:
“The independent English-speaking Caribbean states, exercising their sovereign right to enter into relations with any other sovereign states, and pursuing their determination to seek regional solidarity and to achieve meaningful and comprehensive cooperation among all Caribbean countries will seek the early establishment of relations with Cuba.
To this end, the independent English-speaking Caribbean states will act together on the basis of agreed principles.”
And not only did the four Caricom founder-members go on to establish diplomatic, trade and cultural relations with Cuba on December 8, 1972, but because they did so, not as separate nations, but as a seamless, unified quartet, their position was imbued with the strength that was required to effectively and safely defy the USA and OAS and to establish a progressive precedent that a multitude of other nations followed in the subsequent years!
So, the question that now arises is: “Why hasn’t this well-established principle and modus operandi been followed by so many of our Caricom nations in dealing with the current vexed question of how to respond to the USA and its unreasonable and illegitimate demand to terminate our various medical cooperation programmes with Cuba?”
When the new Trump administration first advanced this outrageous demand in March 2025, there was a commonality of response from several of our heads of government. Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell of Grenada publicly asserted that capitulating to such a demand was out of the question, and, in separate statements, Prime Ministers Gonsalves, Rowley and Mottley made it clear that they resolved to stand firm in defence of their nations’ sovereign right to engage Cuban health professionals, even if it meant suffering the loss of their visas to travel to the USA.
Indeed, Prime Minister Mottley’s statement, delivered from the Barbados House of Assembly, was perhaps the most instructive of them all, and deserves to be quoted in some detail:
“Barbados does not currently have Cuban medical staff or nurses, but I would be the first to go to the line and to tell you that we could not get through the pandemic without the Cuban nurses and the Cuban doctors. I will also be the first to tell you that we paid them the same thing we paid Bajans, and that the notion that we were involved in human trafficking by engaging with the Cuban nurses was fully repudiated and rejected by us.
Now, I don’t believe that we have to shout across the seas, but I am prepared, like others in this region, that if we cannot reach a sensible agreement on this matter, then if the cost of it is the loss of my visa to the US, then so be it. But what matters to us is principles.
We don’t have to shout, but we can be resolute. And I therefore look forward to standing with my Caricom brothers to be able to ensure that we explain that what the Cubans have been able to do for us – far from approximating itself to human trafficking – has been to save lives and limbs and sight for many a Caribbean person.”
What Prime Minister Mottley was saying here was that our Caricom Member States should come together and not only deal with the matter collectively, but that our approach should be to hold firm to our principles and to reject the illicit and unreasonable US demand.
Indeed, Prime Minister Mottley went so far as to assert that even though Barbados does not currently have a Cuban Medical Cooperation programme and was therefore not facing the US demands and threats, that she would be willing to stand in unity on the issue with her fellow Caricom Prime Ministers – even if that stance resulted in her being stripped of her US visa by the US government! In other words, she was counselling a unified Caricom approach, in keeping with articles 6 and 16 of the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas.
Unfortunately, Prime Minister Mottley’s wise counsel does not seem to have prevailed, and we have the spectacle of individual Caricom states attempting to negotiate with the powerful US administration on their own. The predictable result has been either the outright termination or the substantial rolling back of several of the medical cooperation programmes.
In light of the clear guidance from our Treaty, and the powerful message that still emanates from the historic decision of October 1972, this is very regrettable.
All of us in the Caribbean Community well know the phrase – “United we stand, divided we fall”. It is a wise saying that originates with the ancient African griot known as Aesop, and is to be found in Aesop’s fable “The Four Oxen and the Lion” (circa 6th century BC). It is also a nugget of biblical wisdom that was conveyed to us by the Apostle Mark in the form of “A house divided against itself cannot stand” (Mark 3:25). And for those of us who are neither historians nor practising Christians, we surely know this wise saying from the 1970s popular song, “United We Stand”, by the musical group named Brotherhood of Man.
My Caricom brothers and sisters: Let us reclaim and cleave to this timeless wisdom. Whenever we in Caricom have to deal with powerful outside forces intent on having their way with us, let us make every possible effort to develop a united or unified position.
And let us bear in mind that “unity is not necessarily unanimity”. As our recently inaugurated Caricom Full Free Movement Regime has demonstrated, we can have effective unity without having every single Member State on board.
In the current circumstances that we face in Caricom, it may prove to be difficult to achieve unanimity on the thorny geo-political issues of the day, but let that not prevent us from determinedly searching for and achieving the greatest state of unity that we are capable of achieving.
And let us go forward in this current era with the clear understanding that “1 from 10 no longer leaves 0”.
DAVID COMISSIONG
Citizen of the Caribbean Community
