CHINA: Cricket 'Champion'

By Daniel P. Erikson; Paul Wander
April 28, 2007

A worldwide television audience of more than 2 billion turned its attention this month to a sporting event that most Americans don't even know exists: the Cricket World Cup. Since March, the Caribbean has become a cricket battleground for 16 teams from Australia to Zimbabwe -- including England, India, Pakistan and South Africa. The finals are today, but no matter who triumphs on the field, the real winner of this year's match is China.

How did China win the Cricket World Cup? Not by testing their mettle on the pitch; cricket is even less popular in China than in America, and China did not compete in the tournament. Rather, China used the opportunity posed by the Cricket World Cup to seal a series of geostrategic alliances with the small, island countries that hosted this event in the Caribbean.

During the past two years, China has dived into the Caribbean with enormous drive and big money to woo local support by building stadiums and financing infrastructure projects for the region's first major sporting event. Of the eight venues constructed or refurbished for the 2007 World Cricket Cup, China assisted in the construction of five, providing more than 1,000 workers and more than $140 million. Chinese aid also paid for roads, schools, hospitals and other infrastructure improvements in recent years, earning the allegiance of many nations in the process.

The results have earned China significant political capital in the Caribbean and enhanced what had been a weak to nonexistent relationship with many countries.
But if China is the big winner in the Cricket World Cup, then it's clear that the loser is Taiwan. Since the mid-1970s China and Taiwan have engaged in ''dollar diplomacy'' -- a series of winner-take-all bidding wars in which the east Asian nations battle for diplomatic recognition from poor countries around the world by competing to fund large aid projects, such as the new multimillion-dollar cricket venues in the Caribbean.

Due to China's strict One-China policy, countries can recognize either China or Taiwan, but not both. In practice, this policy means that China will not grant recognition to any country that has diplomatic relations with their neighbors across the Taiwan Strait.

Taiwan feels the pressure of the One-China policy and has sought to give the tiny nations of the Caribbean good reason for bucking the world trend of recognizing China. In St. Kitts, Taiwan stemmed pressure to switch allegiance to Beijing by funding the construction of Warner Park Stadium, an $8 million ''Thank you'' from Taipei. But for countries like Grenada and Dominica, who both switched recognition to China in recent years, Taiwan's offerings simply were not enough.

Not all the news is bad for Taiwan. In St. Lucia, the election of Sir John Compton in December set off tremors in Beijing, and this pristine island may once again become a competitive battleground for Taiwan. Moreover, Taiwan has been able to maintain its ties with the other Caribbean basin countries with little interest in cricket, such as in Central America and the island of Hispaniola. But Taiwan has found it difficult to compete with China's most recent round of cricket diplomacy. Taiwan, which once counted on the English-speaking Caribbean as a bastion of support, now only maintains ties to Belize, St. Kitts and Nevis and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

The overall trajectory is clear. In the past two years total Chinese trade with the English-speaking Caribbean doubled to $4 billion. China has successfully used a combination of aid projects through dollar diplomacy and trade preferences to wean the Caribbean away from Taiwan.

In all, the 2007 Cricket World Cup produced more losers than winners. Revenue from ticket sales was well below expectations, and the games themselves were plagued with murder, intrigue and poor performances from several highly rated teams. But from China's perspective, this sporting event provided a crucial opportunity to forge diplomatic inroads in a distant part of the world and to isolate arch-rival Taiwan in the process. Chinese leaders will not need to watch the final matches to know who won the Cricket World Cup. Beijing is already savoring its victory.

Daniel P. Erikson is senior associate for U.S. policy at the Inter-American Dialogue. Paul Wander is program assistant.