[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] Around the world, the Communist rulers of China are planting flags with the speed of a Victorian adventurer claiming lands and seas that others once thought their own or neutral.
Using debt instead of gunboats, the Chinese are tying new nations into their own imperial order.
It looks like Barbados may be the latest trophy in Beijing’s imperial string of pearls.
Last week, the island announced that, after nearly 400 years, the monarchs of Great Britain would no longer rule over them. Not that this Queen ever really did.
As a constitutional monarch, Queen Elizabeth has never exercised any power over the 300,000 inhabitants.
Barbados is, and has been for decades, an independent constitutional realm and a democracy in the Commonwealth.
So why the change? What has triggered the Barbadians to find a new head of state and end the symbolic rule of the world’s most respected head of state?
If there’s one thing we know for certain, it’s nothing the Queen said or did that triggered the change. In fact, it’s nothing the British Government did either.
The move we’re seeing has everything to do with a new scramble for power. The Great Game has given way to the Great Gamble as countries are taking loans from Chinese state banks and betting they can pay them back before the default clauses come due. |