China Aids Suriname, Expanding South American Role - by Simon Romero

Desi Bouterse

The Foreign Ministry’s elegant new headquarters here is a gift from the Chinese government. Chinese signs on hundreds of businesses, from casinos to grocery shops and furniture stores, beckon the residents of this capital. Chinese work crews are paving roads cutting through the jungle.

Anchored by a surge in immigration to this country since the 1990s, and smoothed with gifts of aid and low-interest loans, China has quietly but surely established a foothold in Suriname, a tiny corner of South America that is often an afterthought even for its neighbors.

While the economic aid has certainly been welcome in Suriname, formerly known as Dutch Guiana, the growing political and demographic profile of the Chinese here has created concerns, ranging from xenophobic calls from some political leaders here to investigate what they call a “Chinese invasion” to more tempered efforts to decipher what effect China’s rising influence will have on a country that is already distant linguistically and culturally from the rest of South America.

Note EU-Digest: The Dutch decision to freeze 20 million euro's of foreign aid to Suriname will not have any effect on the Suriname economy since it has become a de-facto Chinese colony. as described in the NY Times article above.. The Netherlands will need to come up with far stronger measures, like the freezing of all trade and travel between Suriname and the Netherlands on a similar basis as the sanctions applied against Cuba by the US. Anything else is just Mickey Mouse diplomacy.

For more: China Aids Suriname, Expanding South American Role - NYTimes