03/04/2014
Miquel Porta Perales is a writer
It is said that China, boosted by an accelerated economic development, is practically unstoppable. The great emerging power, they say. Maybe. But it could also happen—remember what happened to Germany throughout the first decades of the 20th century—that a great power is weakened by its increasing power. And it could also happen that China’s neighbours and competitors—Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Vietnam or India—reach a sort of agreement—either implicit or explicit—to—politically, commercially and territorially speaking—stop the Asian giant. In any case, China is there. And it follows its course. Thus, a question comes up: can we consider the hypothesis of a China that, economically and commercially speaking, will “colonise” the United States? A plausible hypothesis, I believe.
Before strictly responding to the question, a previous one that clears and smoothes the answer. Let us talk about Cuba. Why is the United States reluctant when it comes to normalising political and economic relations with Cuba? A question of human rights and democracy, they claim. Right. But—according to said reason—it is not fully understood why the United States does normalise relations with certain countries where human rights and democracy are clearly perfectible. The United States might be considering some other variable. Let us move to the next point. Let us talk, for instance, about Cuba’s debt to China. The data is not easy to obtain. What we do know—according to the Cuban National Information Agency—is that the Cuban government and China Export & Credit Insurance Corporation (SINOSURE) regularly sign agreements and memoranda in order to “rearrange medium and long-term debt”. A debt payment—the payment is usually deferred for ten years: the first due date would take place in 2016—“secured on short-term export credit”. The signed documents—this detail is important—usually include the constitution of mixed businesses in sectors such as communications, technology-based and mechanical industries. Another detail with regard to this: Raúl Castro referred to them—at the People’s Party National Assembly —as “trading partners”.
The amount of Cuba’s foreign debt is unknown. It has never been published. Even the People’s Party National Assembly does not know the figure. According to the Paris Club—a group of creditors that coordinates and negotiates the foreign debt of the 19 countries which compose it, including Spain—Cuba’s foreign debt amounted to 35,000 million dollars in 2012. According to Cubafacts, the total amount of Cuba’s debt was 71,982 million dollars in 2010. This is, 5,861 dollars per capita, or 12,612 dollars per employed person. Cubafacts does provide the figure of Cuba’s debt to China: 9,100 million dollars. The first creditor is Russia (29,149 million dollars, 90% of which were cancelled in 2013 through an agreement, the terms and conditions of which are unknown), the second one is Venezuela (15,647 million dollars) and Spain is the fifth, with 3,304 million dollars.
After making a detour to Cuba’s debt to China, I return to the initial hypothesis: can we consider the possibility of a China that, economically and commercially speaking, will “colonise” the United States? Let us imagine China waiving Cuba’s debt in exchange for strengthening the agreements mentioned above and therefore strengthening mixed business among the two countries. Among the two “trading partners”, like Raúl Castro said. If that happened, Cuba could become a sort of workshop country or store country—a logistic centre, they say—166 kilometres away from the United States. Chinese goods, and not rafters, would travel from Havana to Key West, and they would join the already numerous goods which come from Asia and which are daily consumed in the United States. The fear of said “colonisation” would explain the reluctance of the United States to lift the economic embargo and to sign commercial and non-commercial agreements with Cuba. Because China could disembark in the United States via Cuba.