China opens Blue Silk Road to Caribbean

The Caribbean’s participation in China’s Blue Silk Road initiative may be the key to unlocking new aspects of tourism, trade, and climate-change resilience.

The need for strategic collaboration between China and Trinidad and Tobago, in particular with regard to developing deep-water resources, emerged as a central topic of discussion during a panel discussion at the event “China Caribbean Cooperation Amid a Changing World” held at the Arthur Lok Jack Global School of Business in Mount Hope, last month.

Dr Char Yu, general director of the Institute of Latin America Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Science, prompted the discussion on marine possibilities that could be explored.

“Both sides, China and the Caribbean countries, can advance the construction of the port and the logistic infrastructure to help build a trade loop between the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. You know, in the past, as a major researcher in China, as in the Latin American studies, we thought a lot about how to connect the Atlantic Ocean and also the Pacific Ocean. So, if we achieve the infrastructure and also the institutional building, we can expand our economic achievements a lot,” said Yu in her speech.

She added that China was interested in helping small island developing states develop these resources while also strengthening the region’s climate adaptation and disaster preparedness capabilities.

Dr Yu continued, “Meanwhile, the cooperation in marine resource protection, offshore aquaculture and seawater desalination aligns with the concept of the Blue Silk Road, offering new development pathways for resource-constrained countries. If you look at the number, the data from China, you will find it’s a big number. It’s just behind the United States. But if you divide it by the population of China, it’s a small number. So that’s why we pay so much attention to green development, because the natural resources are always very limited. The Caribbean is a key region for implementing the global initiatives.”

This suggestion was of special interest to marine scientist and chair of the Asa Wright Nature Centre, Dr Judith Gobin, who said there were significant opportunities for collaboration in deep-sea exploration, an area in which Caribbean countries possess limited capabilities.

“Quite rightly, we need to build capacity,” Gobin said, “We do have a fair amount of capacity. We have institutions like the Institute of Marine Affairs and Fisheries, UWI. We’ve been doing a lot of research, but the new frontier is the deep sea, and we need assistance in going out into the deep sea.”

Gobin explained that deep-sea exploration has been beyond the reach of Caribbean nations due to its cost.

“As you know, it’s quite expensive, and I’m very aware that China has its own deep-sea vessels, research vessels. We don’t. Historically, we do not,” she said.

Gobin explained she participated in research expeditions conducted in T&Ts waters in 2013 and 2014 aboard the exploration vessel Nautilus, which provided a glimpse into a largely unknown ecosystem existing beneath the surface of the Caribbean Sea.

She explained that interest in the deep sea extends beyond scientific curiosity and includes growing international discussions surrounding marine genetic resources and potential future deep-sea mining activities.

According to Gobin, very little of the world’s deep ocean has been studied.

“We don’t know much about the deep-sea environment. It’s just 0.001 per cent of the global deep sea that is known globally, and let alone in our backyard. We don’t know a lot,” she said.

“From that exploration vessel, the trips in 2013 and 14, just one collecting over 72 hours in T&T, we collected over a 150 new species, that is species of organisms that are new to science.”

Economist Dr Indera Sagewan argued that the blue economy could become a central pillar of future Caribbean development strategies, but also stressed there would be other avenues that could be developed apart from infrastructure, as she suggested Caribbean destinations could attract a greater share of Chinese travellers.

“China is one of the largest countries in terms of population. We’re talking about people-to-people. Tourism is important in the region. How do we bring more Chinese tourists to the region? A simple one is that if we could just bring a tiny percentage of what your travellers are, you go to the United States and you see so many Chinese visitors, how do we bring you here?” she asked,”What do we need to do in order to increase the numbers that we are having? We already have some infrastructure. How do we grow that and expand that exponentially?”

Tourism adviser at the Association of Caribbean States, Shanell Sutherland, further explored the topic of tourism, but acknowledged that awareness and connectivity remain major challenges for the Caribbean.

“I would say, firstly, it’s about communication to the point. It’s about creating awareness. There are multitudes of people in the world who still don’t know some of the islands in the Caribbean, some of the islands in the countries in Latin America. So it’s about creating that conduit. We live in a world where we’re more connected than ever, but somehow it’s the flipside, we are more disconnected than ever,” said Sutherland, who hoped that China’s expertise on digital processes could be quickly adopted.

Sutherland said many potential travellers still know little about the Caribbean despite the increasing availability of digital communication tools.

“Utilising those digital transformation channels to open a conduit, marketing campaigns, public relation campaigns where we can create that germane awareness firstly,” said Sutherland, who also hoped that China could help bolster the Caribbean’s warning systems in the face of climate change.

“Using the ocean as a resource, we are within this region, and we experience intense climatic events. As we’ve seen just last year with Hurricane Melissa and there’s a multitude that take place in the region. So building on the point of capacity building, one of the areas that I think is a clear route for collaboration would be in terms of investments in early morning systems and the training and the human capacity and development to work those systems, to understand those systems and to utilise those so that we move from just reacting to the disasters but being very proactive, being able to identify when and then create systems,” she said.

The panel, which also featured former Central Bank governor Professor Winston Dookeran as well as Chinese scholars Dr Xing Guangcheng and Dr Jing Linbo, also discussed potential trade routes between T&T and China.

source : guardian