H@rd Truths By GHK Lall – Chinese ICTR And D-Get Somebody Else Please 

Jul 28, 2023 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – I have great regard for the Chinese people.  They have a history of celestial insight, innovation, and inventiveness.  The Chinese know about struggle and sacrifice, and success coming the hard way.  But China has also had a long and dark history of warlords, and untold wretchedness inflicted on its own people.  Enter the Red Chinese.

I have scant regard for the Red Chinese.  Yes, they are still alive under their banner of capitalist green.  If that has an eerie familiarity about it, this is because Guyanese have a PPP Government (and its warlords) that masquerade under similar capitalist pretenses, but with the Stalinist tendencies towards total control and domination. The Chinese at the top in mainland China are too secretive, have too much of an anything goes mentality, and culture, where the law is concerned.  They may not speak the best English, but there are few better than them at splitting the lingua franca of the Western world, maybe the whole world, to suit their ambitions and fabrications.  This generates a special kind of regard for them, which goes like this: the less that can be done with them, the better.

Thus, I have problems with this business being broadcast around Guyana about a Chinese tech giant setting up a research and development center in this town.  As much as there is huge recognition of Chinese prowess and capabilities, there is the stoniest of receptions for them to be leading the way with ICT matters.  The PPP Government already spies on its citizens.  I know one.  So, to open the door to a giant Chinese technology presence in this country under the guise of a ‘research and development’ center is asking for trouble, opening the floodgates of infiltration into, and collection of, sensitive Guyanese issues of every color and variety.

Do we really need this, another layer of potentially damaging spying networks?  Do we know what we are doing?  Most respectfully to His Excellency Ali, this is crossing swords with the Americans.  Though the President is not a Bible man, I remind of that truism: no one can serve two masters at the same time. ‘Somebady gun get vex.’  The President himself should be familiar with this, considering the inroads made into his own authority and standing with the leadership two-man tag team of which he is the, shall I say gently, the lesser piston.  My objective is not to skewer the nation’s head of state, but to layout the state of this sealed Chinese union.

Please don’t do it, Dr. President.  The Yankees are already unhappy about the way things are (sans Exxon) in Guyana.  Why bait them with this R&D center by a Chinese firm of all things, and making them see red?  if there is one Guyanese who is honest enough to say publicly that they trust the Red Chinese, that Gang of One in Beijing, with the noblest visions and practices to match, then I invite them to do so.  I am sorry, but when I seek honest Guyanese, I am compelled to exclude almost all of the president’s men, and for good measure, those who fawn in obsequious prostration under the heel of the former president.

The first and last conclusion is that a Chinese R&D center in Guyana has teeth.  If the Chinese don’t turn around and bite us, through unexpected arrangements, then the Yankees are going to get us for failing to make up our minds about who our real friends are.  In fact, who are our only genuine friends, and they are neither Chinese nor Indians, neither British nor French, but good ole Americans. How is that for being anti-American?  By the way, I hope that no Guyanese harbours the idea that I like what Exxon is doing here, how it has been allowed to throw its weight around, without restraint and without recourse.

To be brutally frank, there is high disregard for global powers that coerce little peasant places with panjandrums for leaders.  I do not worship Chinese or Americans, but recognise their place and power, and the all-conquering nature of their objective, geo this and geo the other. But, as said before, if forced to choose between the Chinese dragon and the American barbarian, there is no hesitation.  The eagle must be flown with, and sheltered under its wings. Now this is going to upset a ton of folks, but it must be said. The American can, at times, be the worst of barbarians, but there are other times when they are the most civilised barbarians around.  I do not think that that qualifies to be an oxymoron.

To His Excellency (MIA), I say this most humbly: there has to be an R&D center in Guyana for ICT and other purposes, but please do us all a favor and get somebody besides the Chinese. The Americans and Europeans are rough characters (barbarians), but they are of a lesser variety, a slightly lighter shade. I think that that has to count for something. The Yanks already are alarmed by the broad (and deep) Chinese presence in Guyana. This R&D center is throwing gasoline on warm coals.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of this newspaper and its affiliates.)

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• Chinese, GHK Lall, H@rd Truths, ICTR, inventiveness

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