By Bing X
- Experts say Washington should consider buying back some ports, offer incentives to allies to decouple from China.
Calls are growing in Washington for action to loosen Beijing’s influence stemming from Chinese and Hong Kong companies’ control over key infrastructure on the Panama Canal and other port facilities in the Western hemisphere.
At a recent meeting of the US House of Representatives Homeland Security Subcommittee on Transportation and Maritime Security, chairman Carlos Jimenez warned that Beijing has “a strategic position over one of the world’s most important waterways,” referring to the Panama Canal.
He said this gives the Chinese Communist Party an opportunity “to exert influence over commercial shipping, gather intelligence on American and Allied vessel traffic, and potentially restrict the mobility of our Navy in a time of crisis.”
Almost half of the leading container ports outside of China have some Chinese ownership or operations, experts told the hearing.
Panama has recently announced a government audit of ports owned by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing’s CK Hutchison conglomerate, and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has threatened Panamanian leader José Raúl Mulino with potential American retaliation if his country doesn’t immediately reduce Chinese influence over the canal.
“While Panama has recently announced an audit of Hutchinson ports, that’s simply not enough,” Jimenez told the hearing. “We don’t need an audit. We need action.”
“The United States cannot and will not accept the scenario where a foreign adversary, one that openly seeks to undermine our global standing, controls infrastructure critical to us, homeland security, military readiness and economic stability,” he said.
He said US allies should distance themselves from China, including from Chinese state-owned enterprises.
While Mulino insists that the neutrality regime under the Panama Canal treaty has not been violated, two Panamanian lawyers have filed a lawsuit with the country’s supreme court, arguing that the contract allowing Hutchison, a subsidiary of CK Hutchison Holdings, to operate terminals in Balboa, on the Pacific side, and Cristobal on Atlantic side of the Panama Canal is unconstitutional, World Cargo News reported on February 5.
Dual-Use military and civilian operations
Experts told the Homeland Security Committee on February 11 that there are concerns around dual-use military and civilian operations in any port with a Chinese corporate presence, not just in Panama.
Chinese companies have established full or partial ownership of port facilities in seven countries in the Western Hemisphere: The Bahamas, Brazil, Jamaica, Mexico, Panama, Peru and the United States.
