Go Lean Commentary
China has invested heavily in the Caribbean, as of recent; see list here of selected announcements since January 2014:
New $250 Million Hotel Project – The Pointe – Breaks Ground in Nassau
Big China-Bahamas project – Baha Mar – Still embroiled in legal wrangling
A New $2 Billion Caribbean Resort Project in Grenada
Is This Island – Puerto Rico – China’s Next Caribbean Investment Target?
The Caribbean’s Big New Canal Project – backed by China
China to Build More Homes in Grenada
Dominica, China Sign Agreement on $16 Million in Projects
Barbados, China Talk Agriculture
Trinidad, China Talk Infrastructure
British Virgin Islands Signs Agreements With Delegations From China
Just what is China’s motive, their end game?
Should we be leery or should we just embrace [the badly needed] help from whatever sources?
How much of this questioning is influenced by a pro-American yearning? Pro-Christian yearning? Fear of strangers? Racist under-valuing of non-White/European races?
There is the need for the Caribbean to take stock of its thoughts-feelings-actions and give all of these questions serious deliberation.
If this Golden Rule is true: “he who has the gold makes the rules”, then we will be held to account to stakeholders in China, as their many state-own companies are definitely “bringing gold” to the table. This was vividly communicated in a previous (2014) China-Caribbean Trade/Business Summit:
“Latin America has much to gain from deepening its relationship with China, just as China has much to gain from our region,” said Luis Alberto Moreno, president of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). “For our governments, this is a strategic priority. But much of the day-to-day building of those links will fall on the private sector.”
China joined the IDB as a shareholder in 2009, and is now the top trade partner for several countries in the region, including Brazil and Chile.
Trade between Latin America and the Caribbean and China is expected to double in the next decade. …
Source: http://caribjournal.com/2014/09/15/china-holds-business-summit-with-latin-america-caribbean/
The book Go Lean…Caribbean anticipates the participation of Direct Foreign Investments in the Caribbean community. The book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The CU will serve as an integrated entity to shepherd progress and optimization among the region’s societal engines for economics, security and governance. This is to be likened to a Confederated Command of Allied Forces for battles in a “Trade War”.
This aligns with the CU/Go Lean roadmap, as the focus of CU is about Trade, not politics; thus the CU branding is Trade Federation. The experience and wisdom of this roadmap was derived from successes and failures in 2008 Trade Wars.
China is officially a Communist country. But these referenced headlines do not refer to politics nor any Chinese influence of the region’s politics; not even any pressure to lean politically. It is only about trade and succeeding in a global “Trade War”.
China, with its Communist leaning is also officially atheist but truthfully, their de facto policy is religious agnosticism; they simply tolerate them all. (Many religions abound in that 1.2 Billion population, consider: Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism and the toleration of Western religions). The publisher of the book Go Lean…Caribbean, SFE Foundation, is a Community Development Foundation; it shares many of these same ideals. This was related in the book’s opening chapter with this Who We Are statement:
The SFE Foundation is not a person; it’s an apolitical, religiously-neutral, economic-focused movement, initiated at the grass-root level to bring change back to the Caribbean … There is an old observation/expression that states that “there are 3 kinds of people in the world, those who make things happen, those who watch things happen and those who wonder ‘what happened?’“ Principals of SFE Foundation were there in 2008 … on the inside looking out, not the outside looking in. Understanding the anatomy of the modern macro economy, allows the dissection of the processes and the creation of viable solutions.
This focus on trade is very familiar.
This is the same playbook of the United States of America in building the world’s largest Single Market economy. (Remember, with the Army Corp of Engineers, the US built the Panama Canal, but with more strings attached). China is simply following the same American script – minus the cronyism and militarism – of promoting trade of their products, services and capital.
Capital? Yes, many of the projects highlighted in the foregoing news articles are being financed by China’s state-owned banks and lending institutions. They are “putting their money, where their mouth is”. These are economic battles only! See US President Barack Obama’s comments on China’s Caribbean motives in the Appendix-VIDEO below.
As a region, with numerous Failed-States, can we really quiver over the nationality of our benefactors; can we question the ethnicity of the “Cavalry that has come to our rescue”? Hardly! We have to just manage with whatever refuge being offered, to allow us to better cover our basic needs.
For example, healthcare delivery is still a major concern in the Caribbean. According to the following article, the member-state of Jamaica needs to expand their number of hospital beds … and a China-backed project is facilitating this quest:
Title: China to Fund $511 Million Project at University of the West Indies
By: Dana Niland, Contributor, Caribbean Journal – Online News Source; (posted 08/28/2015; retrieved 09/02/2015 from:
http://caribjournal.com/2015/08/28/china-to-fund-511-million-project-at-university-of-the-west-indies/)
The University of the West Indies and China Harbour Engineering Company (see Appendix) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding for a $511 million USD development project.
The project will include the expansion of the University Hospital from 500 to 1,000 beds, an upgrade to the College Commons, the building of a 100-room hotel, and a new center for sporting activities.
The expansion will also include the addition of a cogeneration plant to supply electricity and to feed the cooling system for the campus.
Addressing the signing ceremony at the UWI Mona Campus, Professor Archibald McDonald said that the realignment of the hospital’s structure was necessary to promote efficiency and to put the institution in a position to serve the wider region.
“This will have all the modern facilities. The Government of Jamaica invests a large portion of its budget to the [UHWI]; therefore, the University Hospital has to give back to the people of Jamaica. It has to supplement the Government’s hospitals, and provide a higher level of care,” he said.
Jamaican Minister of Health, Dr. Fenton Ferguson also praised the arrangement.
“I am satisfied that the direction [in which] they are going will preserve and protect the most vulnerable within our society, and ensure that health care is not out of the reach of ordinary citizens,” Ferguson said.
The project in this article is not solely for Jamaica, but rather, it is within the charter of the University of the West Indies; so there is a regional focus.
The underlying motivation of the Go Lean book is brotherly love. Therefore who so ever, brings a solution to impact the Greater Good for the Caribbean people must be embraced, despite their political affiliations. The Go Lean roadmap is therefore not “pro” or “con” American, but rather pro solutions; in fact the CU is described as a technocracy with a focus on delivery and merit; this is the same charter as the Steering Committee of the Government of the Peoples Republic of China. This was related in the Go Lean book (Page 64) as follows:
Even the leaders of the Communist Party of China are mostly professional engineers. The Five-Year plans of the People’s Republic of China have enabled them to plan ahead in a technocratic fashion to build projects such as the National Trunk Highway System, the High-speed rail system, and the Three Gorges Dam.
A basic economic principle, subscribed in Go Lean (Page 21), is that “Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices and Incentives”. So the advanced field of economics hereby posits that Economic Systems, more so than political systems influence people’s choices and incentives. The CU seeks to optimize the region’s economic systems to better deliver on the prime directives of the Go Lean roadmap, pronounced as the following statements:
- Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
- Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines and mitigate challenges/threats to ensure public safety for the region’s stakeholders.
- Improvement of Caribbean governance, including a separation-of-powers with member-states, to support these economic/security engines.
So the CU vision is to provide the stewardship for the region’s economic engines, first, so as to succeed in the goals of the roadmap. This vision was pronounced at the outset of the book in the roadmap’s Declaration of Interdependence (Page 13):
xxiv. Whereas a free market economy can be induced and spurred for continuous progress, the Federation must install the controls to better manage aspects of the economy: jobs, inflation, savings rate, investments and other economic principles. Thereby attracting direct foreign investment because of the stability and vibrancy of our economy.
The CU roadmap drives change among the region’s economic, security and governing engines. These solutions are as new community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocates; sampled as follows:
| Who We Are – Veterans of 2008 “Wars” & Financial Crisis | Page 8 |
| Community Ethos – Voluntary Trade Creates Wealth | Page 21 |
| Community Ethos – Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future | Page 21 |
| Community Ethos – Job Multiplier | Page 22 |
| Community Ethos – Cooperatives | Page 25 |
| Community Ethos – Impact the Greater Good | Page 37 |
| Strategy – CU Vision and Mission | Page 45 |
| Strategy – Build and foster local economic engines | Page 45 |
| Strategy – Reform our HealthCare industries to better fulfill our health care needs | Page 45 |
| Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy – China’s Example | Page 64 |
| Tactical – $800 Billion Economy – How and When – Trade | Page 67 |
| Tactical – Recovering from Economic Bubbles | Page 69 |
| Tactical – Separation-of-Powers – Interstate Commerce & Trade Facilitation | Page 79 |
| Tactical – Separation-of-Powers – Office of Trade Negotiations | Page 80 |
| Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change | Page 101 |
| Implementation – Foreign Policy Initiatives at Start-up | Page 102 |
| Implementation – Trade Mission Objectives | Page 117 |
| Implementation – Ways to Benefit Globalization | Page 119 |
| Planning – Ways to Improve Trade | Page 128 |
| Planning – Ways to Improve Failed-State Indices | Page 134 |
| Planning – Lessons Learned from 2008 | Page 136 |
| Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy | Page 151 |
| Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs | Page 152 |
| Advocacy – Ways to Improve Healthcare | Page 156 |
| Advocacy – Ways to Impact Public Works – US Army Corp of Engineers Model | Page 175 |
| Advocacy – Ways to Preserve Caribbean Heritage | Page 218 |
| Advocacy – Ways to Re-boot Jamaica | Page 239 |
| Appendix – Trade SHIELD Principles | Page 264 |
| Appendix – Caribbean Failed-States Indicators & Definitions | Page 271 |
The Caribbean region needs help! We need the elevations of this Go Lean roadmap; we need the direct investments from China’s banks. We need the expertise and core competences of China’s many state-owned engineering and development companies. We simply cannot expect progress with a North American-only focus. We cannot only look North and West, we must also look East and South. The world is now flat; we must embrace globalization.
It is now a changed world. We must embrace China. Not as new colonizers, but as partners. There are opportunities for China to reap returns on their investments, with no exploitation of the Caribbean land or people.
The Caribbean is arguably the best address on the planet, but there are many deficiencies, as in jobs and economic empowerments. With the previous North & West focus we have suffered. Our deficiencies has led to societal abandonment so bad that the region has lost a large share of our human capital, one estimate of 70% of the college-educated population to the brain-drain.
No More! Our region can be and must be better.
The shepherding of the Caribbean economy now requires best-practices and technocratic executions; it requires those trained and accomplished from the battles of globalization and trade wars. This is the Go Lean roadmap.
Everyone, the people, businesses, institutions and trading partners are all hereby urged to lean-in to this roadmap to make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play. 🙂
Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!
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Appendix – China Harbour Engineering Company, Ltd (CHEC) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Harbour_Engineering
CHEC is an engineering contractor and a subsidiary of CCCC (China Communications Construction Company), providing infrastructure construction, such as marine engineering, dredging and reclamation, road and bridge, railways, airports and plant construction.[1] As a dredger the company is the second largest in the world, carrying out contracts in Asia, Africa, and Europe.[2]
The company was established in December 2005 during the merger of China Harbour Engineering Company Group (founded 1980) with China Road and Bridge Corporation into CCCC.
CHEC has won large contracts for dredging, particularly in the Middle East and Asia.
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Appendix – VIDEO – President Obama On China’s Influence In The Caribbean & Latin America https://youtu.be/vfve6V3zA08