China has broken ground and taken over the economic future of a country whose nearest island to the U.S. mainland is Bimini, only 50 miles away.
The Nassau Guardian editorialized: "The Bahamas has fallen fully into the embrace of China. And the rising empire has been kind with its gifts … What Bahamians must understand is that when China lends, and it contracts its own workers to do the job, a significant amount of the money borrowed goes back to China with the workers who build the project. They pay their workers with money we borrow … The Chinese also keep their workers in self-contained on-site camps when they are sent abroad. We barely get them to visit our stores to spend the money we borrowed when they are working in our countries."
China clearly sees a permanent foothold in the Caribbean in its geopolitical future. The U.S. Embassy in Barbados is responsible for half a dozen island nations -- Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, British Virgin Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Guadeloupe/Martinique, St. Barts, St. Kitts -- where the United States has no diplomatic representation. China has an ambassador or a consul in seven of them; the United States not one.
scheduled to open in December 2014, will be the Caribbean's largest casino, one area where China trumped Las Vegas a decade ago. Macau, the former Portuguese peninsula colony, overtook "Lost Wages" a decade ago and is now the world's biggest gambling mart.
With revenues up 58 percent to $30 billion, three times the size of the Las Vegas take, Macau offers a choice of 24 casinos, 2,762 gaming tables and 6,546 slot machines.
China is getting far more worldwide influence from its sovereign investment fund than the United States got from a $1 trillion war in Iraq and a half-trillion-dollar war in Afghanistan -- with several more years to go. With the interest on the money the United States owes China -- $1.3 trillion in trade debt -- the Chinese are winning friends and influencing people at breakneck speed
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