China “expands its influence” in Latin America and the Caribbean and “manipulates” their governments by “predatory investment practices”warned this Wednesday two generals of USA.
The Chinese government “continues expanding its economic influencediplomatic, technological, informative and military in Latin America and the Caribbean,” General Laura Richardsonhead of the Southern Command.
the asian colossus “has the ability and intent” to “promote his brand of authoritarianism and amass power and influence at the expense of these democracies“, he lamented before the committee on armed services at a hearing on security challenges in the Americas.
For now “has expanded its ability to extract resources, establish portsmanipulate governments through predatory investment practices and build potential dual-use space facilities,” he said.
The general told congressmen that the latin american leaders “they are desperate for their economies” after having fully suffered the onslaught of the pandemic and, as they usually remain in power for a single term, they are in a hurry.
“When nothing else is available, there is no western or international investment or bidders in the tenders that come outwhen there are large projects for critical infrastructures and there are only Chinese bidders (…) they have no choice,” he said.
He general Glen D. VanHerckhead of the northern command, agreed.
“We should be very concerned about the chinese investment in all the Western Hemisphere“, he said, and specified that only in Mexico, Chinese companies such as Huawei supply around 80% of telecommunications.
In the Bahamas they also “aggressively” pursue their economic goals and “They built the largest embassy in the worldVan Herck added.
Richardson criticized the effects of the Belt and Road Initiativealso known as the New Silk Roada global infrastructure development strategy launched by Beijing.
At a time when the Latin American countries “try to get out of the hole” China appears with billions of dollars available to big projects that “they look like investments but everything is in critical infrastructure”.
“Surprisingly in the space, telecommunications and deep-water ports. You have to wonder why,” she ironized.
