For several years now local businesspeople, big and small, have grumbled mainly under their breath about unfair, if not downright illegal, competition from what they say is a growing Chinese
commercial sector in Saint Lucia. And yet there has been no obvious reaction by the authorities. Not from the China-friendly Kenny Anthony government of 1997-2006 and not by the 2006-2011 John Compton-Stephenson King administrations that severed diplomatic connections with Mainland China in favor of the People’s Republic of China (Taiwan) soon after taking office.
Not even the Chamber of Commerce and SLISBA have reacted publicly to suggestions that undocumented Chinese personnel were operating various businesses in Saint Lucia. Perhaps the official silence might be blamed on the fact that the complaints have largely been anonymous, whether from unidentified callers to Newsspin or from pseudonymous contributors to the letter-to-the-editor columns of our newspapers.
All of that could change, now that the Saint Lucia Manufacturers Association has entered the picture. In a press release dated 23 January 2012, the group’s president Paula Calderon expressed serious concern that “an influx of Chinese persons” had purchased passports “in some OECS countries and become OECS citizens,” and were operating businesses in the region.
Calderon believes the region’s heads of government “are not considering the long-term impact on their people.” She adds: “We are trading with a country that is notoriously unfair in its trading practices. The Chinese do not employ locals, except perhaps just one person to act as a front, and their profits go to China. The incentives they
receive from their government are way better that what many local business people receive when starting a business.”
According to Calderon: “Some manufacturing companies in the OECS have already lost millions of dollars, thanks to the
Chinese who manufacture the same product. It is impossible to compete with persons who have benefits from their home country which cannot be
quantified. If our heads of government wish to invite the Chinese to invest in our countries, such investment should be in the manufacturing industry rather than in our retail businesses. Further, the type of manufacturing permitted should not be the same as already exists in our countries.”
The SMA president observed that “in Roseau, Dominica, every other retail store is connected with a Chinese investor.” Moreover: “In Saint Lucia they are involved in the retail and small manufacturing business, hitherto the province of local entrepreneurs. The question must be asked and publicly answered by our governments: Rather than importing fair or unfair competition, shouldn’t our governments be helping our people purchase Chinese products to be retailed by our people to our people?”
Observes Calderon, finally: “The issue of reciprocity must be
faced. Can a citizen of an OECS territory purchase a Chinese passport and then go on to open a business in China? We need to
look at our foreign investments from an economic point of view and not only from the political view point.”
On Monday, heads of OECS governments met in Saint Lucia. It is
not clear whether the subject of the SMA press release was on their agenda.
Local manufacturers invite governments to investigate China syndrome!
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Rodney Bay Industrial Estate
Massade, Gros Islet
Tel: 1 (758) 450 - 7827 | Fax: 1 (758) 450 - 8694 / 8690
STAR Publishing Company is the publisher and printer of the STAR Newspaper
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China has a large population of slaves (low paid workers) to produce quality products which flood the entire world market, and now that things are getting bleak, we have no choice but to investigate the China scourge.
Chinese produce “quality” products??? My dear friend i’ve always enjoyed reading your contributions but on this one, i’d disagree. Given the chocie i’d gladly pay more for British, Canadian, and American made products. However, these same countries, the U.S being the being most guilty have outsourced much of it’s manufacturing to China thereby degrading the quality of their products. I don’t trust anything Chinese; i may be fighting a losing battle but at least i’ve taken a stance. All the best.
Chinese Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) plays a critical role and boasts some of the world’s top economic intelligence gathering units. While it is predominant with regards to the government’s formal interface with foreign commercial interest groups, it also has sub intelligence units dealing with economic information gathering. According to the French publication, Intelligence Online, MOFCOM works closely with the MSS, with key agents from the latter assigned to ministry positions as special staff.
Their mission is to accompany China’s massive economic change on the world economic stage by such actions as gaining headway within the World Trade Organization (WTO), negotiating intellectual
Tonton Continue Re:MOFCOM
negotiating intellectual property agreements, hammering out trade strategy, acquiring new technologies and forming joint ventures with key overseas actors.
Importantly, unlike other countries, the dividing line between state and private enterprise is deliberately blurred, with individuals wearing many hats. A Chinese business leader may head a Chinese company with state share-holding. He may also report to MOFCOM and be a member of the MSS or some other high ranking CCP official working in one ofthe multitude of research organizations or think-tanks.
Tonton Continue Re: MOFCOM
St. Lucia and the OECS countries better wake and pay serious attention to the influx of Chinese nationals operating businesses in the region.
Dominica is the culprit and must stop the cash for citizen program or kick them from the OECS.
a. The long-term impact on chinese coming to OECS islands is that serious work will be done. The locals are lazy, work poorly and charge a lot for their shabby work.
b. Chinese cannot employ locals because the locals are underperformers.
c. Locals can invest in local manufacturing enterprises but they do not do it. They prefer the short route of buying something from overseas and selling it.
Plus many locals like to sell drugs, so why work after all?
d. Foreigners know about investing in OECS because the horror stories have been publicized on the Net already.
Locals should be happy that somebody, in this case the Chinese, bring money in.
e. Locals can travel to China but they cannot live and invest there because they cannot work like Chinese do. This applies to other countries too where locals would close down their new business in less than 3 months. OECS locals can work only in their small islands and many are not even allowed back in USA, Canada, UK or elsewhere because of their misbehavior.
f. Next time Mrs. Paula Calderon, when you write an article, make sure to write something that makes sense. Stop promoting poor work, bad attitudes and inferior manufacturing (banana, rum and wicker furniture) the way it is done here as a worthy effort, because we know better than to believe you.
finally ! there’s a discussion of the Chinese
population in the region..Yes–they hire their own..so how does that benifit the island? The government needs to re-visit the
agreement made with them to include more born nationals to benifit.
its too late as usual, we tend to be reactive and never proactive.. i like chinese in particular their culture.. they are very patriotic ppl and have 58 ethnicities in the 3rd largest geographical country in the world.. it appears China has had a policy of world outreach for decades and its only now we in the wider region are experiencing that
What we need is that the ordinary stlucian gets a proper wage be it from local companies or chinese owned they only pay as the system allows.. if only they paid a little better then i would have no problem whatsoever with Chinese firms setting up shop i welcome them cause they dont stick to one line of business they branch out. we need labour code…
Well….get ready for even more chinese! Deplomatic relations with the mainland will be announced at the next budget debates! The chinese has made global conqquest their national motto. St. Lucia will be giving over its sovereignty sometime in april this year….passports and business ownership is the least we have to fear!
The chinese want to take over st lucia and make it communist. They started off by providing chinese food to get the locals hooked on the food, entering illegally, sending drugs within containers making the locals sell their drugs and providing them with machine guns. They then slowly set up businesses in order to take over the country, back in the 1990′s any black man dating a chinese in china was killed. They do not like black people only to rule, can’t you see what they are doing in africa, open your eyes st lucia. Nostradamus predicted that China will take Africa. These people want to rule the world, they are bas—-s.
Put a block on immigrants from china, before its too late.
I forgot to mention I do love their food.
The government needs to get ex-pates to set up businesses between the Uk, USA, France, you don’t need China, look what they have done in Brazil, cheap clothing poor quality, look what they have done in Italy, over 20,000 chinese have set up in small town in Italy, producing immitation leather jackets, and clothing on mass scale again poor quality. St lucia is a small Island what does China want with St lucia? The Sulfur Springs, undiscovered minerals, its definitely a take over guys. Sort yourselves out fast.