As China celebrates its National Day, it is dealing with complicated challenges on multiple fronts. Much has been written by experts who have spent lifetimes studying China and its relations with the rest of the world so that anything that comes out of our little corner of the world is very much a subject of our own limited perspectives. The defining background, of course, is China’s development into a great economic and military power in the past thirty years. For Guyana, our relations with China began in 1972 when diplomatic relations were established. Even though courageous at the time, Guyana followed the United States and did not anticipate US hostility to its move. The PPP had relations with the Chinese Communist Party long before as fraternal parties, This was disrupted during the period of the dispute between the Soviet Union and China, but resumed later.
President Obama’s ‘pivot to Asia’ was seen as a thinly disguised attempt to ‘contain’ the growing military power of China, which the US presumably felt would later be a threat to its allies in the region, including Japan and South Korea. While controversy has existed for a long time about China’s claims to ownership of islands claimed by other countries, including Japan, in the South China seas, the heightening of tensions by increasing US military activities, is an integral part of the efforts of the West to ‘contain’ China. The latter’s interest in retaining influence or control over the South China seas is to protect its trade routes and its security.