I ran into a woman this past week who lived in Jamaica and travelled to the U.S. for business. She was interested in my first book, and knew my name because of it. She said I should have done more inquiries into the Caribbean because the Chinese were using the same techniques in the Belt and Road initiative in Jamaica than they were using in North Africa.
She said the Chinese got deep into domestic politics by buying local political officials who were corrupt enough to sell their souls to Chinese businessmen who bought buildings and brought in Chinese labor that wiped out most of the competition and created monopolies in local business. I told her this sounds like what they did with economic zones in Vietnam. She said it was to her too.
They bred themselves into the local population and it is not hard to find a generation of mixed race individuals in key positions throughout the country. Businesses now have Chinese owners, that once had Jamaicans in those jobs. They own the utilities and the telecommunications ( she was attending a telecommunications conference) and very few of her friends believe the Chinese are doing this out of the graciousness of their collective hearts. She pointed me to a few sources that might help clarify both the situation in Jamaica and a few of the other island nations in that region. That can be a chapter in my next book.
No comments:
Post a Comment