Ucill Cam­bridge

With­in a month T&T will open its em­bassy in Be­jing, Chi­na, more than 30 years af­ter Chi­na es­tab­lished its em­bassy here in T&T.On June 20, 1974 Chi­na es­tab­lished diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions with T&T and in April of 1975 the em­bassy was es­tab­lished.For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an sees no is­sue in the de­lay in rec­i­p­ro­cat­ing."It is all a mat­ter of tim­ing," he said.

How­ev­er, op­po­si­tion mem­ber and for­eign af­fairs min­is­ter un­der the PNM gov­ern­ment Paula Gopee-Scoon claims the ground­work for the em­bassy was com­plet­ed dur­ing her time in of­fice.From his Tow­er C, Hy­att of­fice, Min­is­ter Dook­er­an wel­comed en­quiries about the project."There is no ques­tion that Chi­na is emerg­ing as a lead­ing eco­nom­ic pow­er in the world, ex­pect­ing to ri­val even the Unit­ed States. It is al­so a lead­ing na­tion of the BRICS," which he said is viewed as the "new po­lit­i­cal frac­tion".

BRICS is an acronym for the economies of Brazil, Rus­sia, In­dia, Chi­na and since 2010, South Africa com­bined. The gen­er­al con­sen­sus is that the term was first promi­nent­ly used in a Gold­man Sachs re­port from 2003, which spec­u­lat­ed that by 2050 these economies would be wealth­i­er than most of the cur­rent ma­jor eco­nom­ic pow­ers.The set­ting up of the T&T Em­bassy in Chi­na is meant to ready this gov­ern­ment to "make the shift in its glob­al po­si­tion­ing from the tra­di­tion­al mod­els.

"We are liv­ing in a world of shift­ing glob­al po­lit­i­cal pow­ers and we must ad­just to deal with the shift, with­out negat­ing the re­la­tion­ships we en­joyed with our tra­di­tion­al part­ners; this is mul­ti­tracked diplo­ma­cy," he said.The min­is­ter al­so sees the con­cretis­ing of the T&T/Chi­na dy­nam­ic as good strat­e­gy to get in­to the Latin Amer­i­can mar­ket, an­tic­i­pat­ing that the Chi­nese pres­ence in Latin Amer­i­ca will in­crease.

It may prove to be a good strat­e­gy, since, it is be­lieved that the Latin Amer­i­can/Chi­na af­fair is wax­ing warm.Javier San­ti­so, chief econ­o­mist and deputy di­rec­tor of the Or­gan­i­sa­tion for Eco­nom­ic Co­op­er­a­tion and De­vel­op­ment (OECD) De­vel­op­ment Cen­tre ob­serves that "Latin Amer­i­ca is look­ing to­wards Chi­na and Asia–and Chi­na and Asia are look­ing right back.

This is a ma­jor shift: for the first time in its his­to­ry, Latin Amer­i­ca can ben­e­fit from not one but three ma­jor en­gines of world growth. Un­til the 1980s, the Unit­ed States was Latin Amer­i­ca's ma­jor trade part­ner. In the 1990s, a sec­ond growth en­gine emerged with the Eu­ro­pean in­vest­ment boom in the re­gion. Now, at the dawn of the new cen­tu­ry, the emer­gence of Asia, and in par­tic­u­lar Chi­na, has the po­ten­tial to act as a third en­gine of growth."

Out­side of the glob­al po­si­tion­ing and strate­gis­ing, there is al­so the fact that this coun­ty al­ready en­joys a good re­la­tion­ship with its soon-to-be Asian part­ner. Ac­cord­ing to a doc­u­ment from the For­eign Af­fairs Min­istry, since the es­tab­lish­ment of diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions in 1974 T&T has en­tered in­to 40 bi­lat­er­al agree­ments with Chi­na, where, "many of these agree­ments have in­clud­ed fi­nan­cial arrange­ments in the form of grants and in­ter­est-free and con­ces­sion loans."

To for­ward the coun­ty's in­ter­est in strength­en­ing bi­lat­er­al re­la­tions, Dook­er­an said the Gov­ern­ment is about to send two "young diplo­mats" to study and learn the diplo­ma­cy re­quire­ments of Chi­na. The Chi­nese are known to be very par­tic­u­lar about pro­to­col."With­in a short time they will go to phys­i­cal­ly es­tab­lish an of­fice, the prepara­to­ry work is be­ing done. Cab­i­net has al­ready ap­proved the set­ting up of the Be­jing of­fice."

With­in a month, Min­is­ter Dook­er­an said a core group will be sent to staff the em­bassy of­fice, while he an­tic­i­pates it will take an­oth­er three to six months to have the mis­sion ful­ly staffed and func­tion­ing to op­ti­mum.But Gopee-Scoon, MP for Point Fortin, said the prepara­to­ry work had al­ready been done by her dur­ing the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion.

"This goes back all the way to Dr Er­ic Williams who start­ed diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions with coun­tries which he felt we need­ed to have such re­la­tions; Chi­na was one such coun­try. He did not es­tab­lish an em­bassy but we al­ways en­joyed good re­la­tions with Chi­na."She said the set­ting up of the mis­sion in Chi­na was a task fi­nalised un­der the last PNM gov­ern­ment.

"It was all fi­nalised un­der my watch. We sent a mis­sion to Chi­na and start­ed the process of look­ing for the of­fice lo­ca­tion and for staff to staff the of­fice. It was to have tak­en on the pos­ture of a trade cen­tre–trade would have been the fo­cus."She said ev­i­dence of this is con­tained in a Cab­i­net note. She said her gov­ern­ment sent per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Mar­garet Par­ril­lon to Chi­na for the ground work set up.

No mat­ter who takes the cred­it for the es­tab­lish­ment, Charge d'Af­fairs of the Chi­nese Em­bassy, Lan Hep­ing, is just hap­py that it has hap­pened."We are very, very glad to see this de­vel­op­ment. We have been look­ing for­ward to this for a long time. It's al­most 40 years since Chi­na es­tab­lished its em­bassy in Port-of-Spain so we are glad that Trinidad has fi­nal­ly de­cid­ed to have an em­bassy in Be­jing," she said.

Hep­ing added that the es­tab­lish­ment of a mis­sion will be help­ful with the bi­lat­er­al re­la­tions be­tween the two coun­tries and would strength­en cul­tur­al and eco­nom­ic ties.

"It will work well for peo­ple-to-peo­ple com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Hav­ing an em­bassy in Be­jing will make it eas­i­er for the Chi­nese peo­ple to ac­quire visas to vis­it Trinidad, so you can look for­ward to more Chi­nese vis­i­tors, more trade and more cul­tur­al and educ­tion­al ex­changes. Your cul­ture is mul­ti­cul­tur­al and we look for­ward to see­ing the Chi­nese cul­ture, through this de­vel­op­ment al­so be­come more mul­ti­cul­tur­al.

Dook­er­an an­tic­i­pates that up­on the es­tab­lish­ment of the mis­sion there will be two key is­sues which he ex­pects to emerge; the first is the "is­land is­sue" in­volv­ing the claim be­ing made by both Chi­na and Japan of "sov­er­eign­ty" over the Diaoyu Is­lands, and the next, the is­sue of Ko­rea and the po­ten­tial for a nu­clear threat."Trinidad and To­ba­go will stick with the Unit­ed Na­tions in terms of this po­si­tion so we will be able to take a glob­al col­lec­tive ap­proach to the is­sue."

He added that a UN mis­sion is ex­pect­ed to vis­it Port-of-Spain to talk about bi­o­log­i­cal and chem­i­cal war­fare, "to bring us up to scratch and en­sure that we are able to com­ply with those re­spon­si­bil­i­ties," he said.