SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico Feb 19, 2005 — China is waging an aggressive campaign of seduction in the Caribbean, wooing countries away from relationships with rival Taiwan, opening markets for its expanding economy, promising to send tourists, and shipping police to Haiti in the first communist deployment in the Western Hemisphere.
And the United States, China's Cold War enemy, is benignly watching the Asian economic superpower move into its backyard.
For decades China and Taiwan used dollar diplomacy to win over small Caribbean nations where small projects building roads, bridges, wells and fisheries go a long way.
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But Beijing's growing economic clout is tipping the scales in the region. Caribbean trade with China reached $2 billion last year, a 42.5 percent increase from 2003, the Chinese news agency Xinhua reported.
The United States has applauded China's economic offensive, seeing it as a herald of political reform.
"China's intensified interest in the Western Hemisphere does not imply a lack of focus by the United States," Roger Noriega, the U.S. assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere affairs, said in a recent letter to the editor of New Jersey's Newark Star Ledger. "The United States has long stood for expansion of global trade and consolidating democracy."
This year, two Caribbean countries Dominica and Grenada switched allegiance to China, abandoning Taiwan, which China calls "a renegade province."
Though democratic Taiwan is self-governing, communist Beijing insists the island is part of China. The two sides split amid civil war in 1949 and Beijing has since refused to have ties with any government that recognizes Taiwan.
"Democratic, market-oriented Taiwan is a thorn in its side," said Steve Johnson, senior policy analyst at the conservative Washington, D.C.-based Heritage Foundation.
Two weeks before Dominica changed sides, Taiwan gave it $9 million. China promised Dominica $112 million over the next six years.
"China is not only increasing its influence in the Caribbean, the region is opening up to China, realizing that Taiwan's money diplomacy is not working anymore," said Guyana's Foreign Minister Clement Rohee.
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Oil Falls On Rising US Supply - [ 1:57 pm PST, 18 February 2005 ]
Oil prices fell 1.6 percent on Thursday.
United States light crude futures fell 79 cents to US$47.54 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
London Brent crude fell 33 cents at US$45.82 on the International Petroleum Exchange. US crude stocks are at the highest level since 1999 - 8.5 percent higher than last year. Gasoline supplies are 7.4 percent higher.
US gasoline futures dropped 4.63 cents to $1.2365 a gallon on the NYMEX.
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Appeal For al Qaeda Info - [ 1:53 pm PST, 18 February 2005 ]
America has launched a campaign on Pakistani television and radio advertising multi-million dollar rewards for information leading to the arrest of Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders.
A 30-second television commercial shows pictures of bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, who both have nearly $35 million rewards on their heads.
12 other terrorist suspects, including the leader of Afghanistan's vanquished Taliban militia, Mullah Mohammad Omar, are also in the commercial.
It is the first time the United States has used these methods in Pakistan although officials routinely speculate that the al Qaeda leader is hiding somewhere on the rugged border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.