{"id":199125,"date":"2024-04-19T10:54:01","date_gmt":"2024-04-19T14:54:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/antiguanewsroom.com\/?p=199125"},"modified":"2024-04-19T10:54:01","modified_gmt":"2024-04-19T14:54:01","slug":"china-building-new-outpost-on-u-s-doorstep-leaked-documents-reveal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/antiguanewsroom.com\/china-building-new-outpost-on-u-s-doorstep-leaked-documents-reveal\/","title":{"rendered":"China Building New Outpost on U.S. Doorstep, Leaked Documents Reveal"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Source- NEWS WEEKS:<\/strong> On a Caribbean island just 220 miles from the shore of the U.S. Virgin Islands, a black-clad Chinese security guard swept an arm at more than a thousand acres of woodland and a glittering, aqua-green marine reserve beyond.<\/p>

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“It’s like a small country,” he said in Chinese.<\/p>\n

This natural paradise on the island of Antigua, where officials will study the thoughts of\u00a0Xi Jinping<\/a>, is about to be razed for a Chinese-run special economic zone. According to documents reviewed by\u00a0Newsweek<\/em>\u00a0it will have its own customs and immigration formalities, a shipping port and a dedicated airline and will be able to issue passports. It will establish businesses offering everything from logistics to cryptocurrencies, facial surgery to “virology.”<\/p>

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China, its state-owned companies and aligned private businesses are expanding rapidly in the island nation of Antigua and Barbuda and in other Caribbean countries in this strategic region long known as “America’s third border,” according to a\u00a0Newsweek<\/em>\u00a0investigation of government and corporate documents as well as interviews with Antiguan leaders.<\/p>

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China’s growing regional presence is potentially the greatest external challenge to the United States in the Americas since the Soviet Union set up in Cuba in the 1960s\u2014and the\u00a0U.S. military<\/a> is concerned.<\/p>\n

“We are aware that China may use its commercial and diplomatic presence for military purposes. In Asia, Africa and the Middle East, China has already abused commercial agreements at host-country ports for military aims; our concern is they may do the same in this region,” a spokesperson for the Florida-based Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) told\u00a0Newsweek<\/em>.<\/p>

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Hundreds of millions of dollars of loans and grants from China and extensive construction by Chinese state-owned companies of critical infrastructure including ports, airports and water systems are turning Antigua\u2014once considered part of America’s “backyard”\u2014into China’s front yard, critics say.<\/p>\n

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A view of Antigua’s coast from Boggy Peak, the country\u2019s highest peak.<\/span>GEMMA HANDY<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Antiguan Prime Minister Gaston Browne was effusive in his praise for China and its leader Xi in a\u00a0Newsweek<\/em>\u00a0interview in St. John’s, capital of this nation of just 97,000 people and 170 square miles that is about the size of the New York City borough of Queens.<\/p>

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Western countries were not giving the help Antigua needed, Browne said.<\/p>

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“I see China, though, as a country that stands on truth, and a country that, you know, at least has some level of empathy for small states, and generally for poor and dispossessed persons globally,” said Browne.<\/p>\n

On a\u202fweeklong trip to China in January, Browne opened Antigua’s embassy in Beijing\u2014the countries have had diplomatic relations since 1983\u2014and ministers signed at least nine memorandums of understanding on everything from granting maritime rights to Chinese shipping and sailors to committing Antiguan officials to study Xi Jinping Thought on Governance.<\/p>\n

“One of the things that we have followed with Xi Jinping is he seems to have a base, a global view in terms of a common humanity,” said Browne, who has been in power for a decade.<\/p>\n

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Prime Minister Gaston Browne of Antigua meets with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing, January 2024.<\/span>PRIME MINISTER’S OFFICE<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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By backing its words with dollars China had become Antigua’s “lender of first choice,” offering 2 percent interest rates and a five-year moratorium on repayments, Browne told\u00a0Newsweek<\/em>. Antigua joined China’s Belt and Road infrastructure initiative in 2018, one of the first among about half a dozen Caribbean nations, making it part of a global chain of influence managed from Beijing.<\/p>\n

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Antigua has traded its sovereignty, I think most of us believe, to China. I think China wants a foothold in more strategic places, as a superpower.”<\/p>\n

– Gisele Isaac, chairwoman of the United Progressive Party<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Diplomats from Europe and Asia in the region suspect that China’s interests in Antigua are more than just economic. Its\u00a0new embassy<\/a>\u00a0in St. John’s\u2014dubbed The Fortress by Antiguans for its large size and tight security\u2014may be a regional intelligence center alongside decades-old facilities that the U.S. says Beijing uses to spy from Cuba. While the diplomats declined to provide details, they said that because of close U.S. attention on Cuba, Antigua was both an expansion and a “fall back” position.<\/p>\n

SOUTHCOM told\u00a0Newsweek<\/em>, “Given the breadth of investment into logistics infrastructure China has made in the Caribbean, we are concerned that China could task its state-owned enterprises and diaspora to conduct intelligence or influence operations against the U.S. and our partners in the region for military purposes. Those concerns are further heightened when you consider the Chinese Communist Party’s practice of targeting, recruiting and bribing officials.”<\/p>\n

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The Chinese embassy did not respond to emails requesting comment on China’s relations with Antigua or whether there was an intelligence base in the embassy. A person answering the telephone declined to take questions.\u202fIn Beijing in January before Browne’s visit, foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning called Antigua “an important cooperation partner of China” in the Caribbean.<\/p>\n

Browne told\u00a0Newsweek<\/em>\u00a0that suggestions that China was operating an intelligence base were “utter rubbish.”<\/p>\n

In the past, the United States guarded its hold on the Americas closely. The 19th century Monroe Doctrine held that any intervention in the political affairs of a state in the Americas by foreign powers was a potentially hostile act. The world was brought to the brink of nuclear war in the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 over U.S. objections to Soviet nuclear weapons deployments in Cuba. And in 1983, U.S. forces overthrew a pro-Soviet leader in Grenada.<\/p>\n

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