What's China's Number Two doing in the Bahamas?

My friend in the Bahamas (how nice it is to be able to start a sentence thus) tells me that they are enjoying the visit of top Chinese mogul (well, President of Parliament actually, but he ranks second in the Politburo) Wu Bangguo. What on earth is he doing there, considering that one can get a decent tan in China this time of year? According to the official communiqué it is about “increasing mutual understanding and enhancing freedom”. Well, if one wants to know how to enhance one’s freedom, the Number Two in the Chinese Communist Politburo is exactly the chap one would turn to, n’est-ce pas?

More importantly (one suspects) the Chinese are currently paying for all the roads in Nassau to be rebuilt, and building the Bahamians a National Stadium. The roads are apparently excellent – this is something we all know the Chinese can do. (Once I took a British Professor of Civil Engineering round some Chinese construction projects and he was horrified, but that was twenty years ago and they’re all still standing.)

My friend wonders what exactly the Chinese are getting out of the deal other than good will, which, he says, they could have had for a smile and a beer. Is the Politburo laying the groundwork for a self-indulgent retirement?

The answer is probably that the Chinese take the UN rhetoric about all countries being equal and equally worthy of respect rather seriously. Of course they tend to confuse countries with their governments, but in a fairly benign environment like the Bahamas that doesn’t do any harm. Behind that, of course, lurks the fact that China needs votes at the UN, and that of the Bahamas is as good as, to take an example entirely at random, Japan’s. And the Taiwanese are active in the area and aren’t short of a bob or two. The amounts China is prepared to spend in order to pre-empt the Taiwanese are quite impressive. Still, I’m glad the Bahamians are getting their new roads and stadium, and I hope to be out there to see them before too long.