It was quite a contrast. On June 18, a 28-person delegation from the Gong Xiang (GX) Foundation, a Chinese charity providing medical and public health assistance to countries along China’s Belt and Road Initiative arrived in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, with $3.6 million worth of dengue fever early detection and protection equipment. GX teams fanned out across the country immediately, distributing the equipment to the nation’s hospitals and worst-hit towns, with advice on how to best deploy the aid. Honduras is one of the worst-hit by the dengue epidemic spreading across Ibero-America, so much so that it declared a national state of emergency on May 31. Dengue fever has no cure yet, but its spread can be contained by public health measures to reduce the mosquitoes which carry it.
In welcoming the delegation, Foreign Minister Enrique Reina noted that “Gong Xiang” means “to share.” Honduran-Chinese relations are “based on mutual aid in confronting common challenges,” he emphasized, and are strengthened by such solidarity in times in need.
The same day, the head of the U.S. Southern Command, Gen. Laura Richardson, concluded her two-day visit to Honduras, giving an “exclusive” interview to a reporter from the nation’s largest media chain. La Prensa’s headline on the interview—"Laura Richardson Warns Honduras: China Is a Threat” —summed up the message the U.S. general had delivered in her meetings with President Xiomara Castro, the military high command, and “key business leaders.”
Richardson is notorious in Central and South America for her anti-China rants, and the fight of GX against dengue was no exception. “Team Honduras and Team USA have to stay united” against the Belt and Road Initiative, “communism,” Chinese threats to human rights, she pronounced. China’s investments are only made to “spy on you” and extract resources, she said, and shamelessly declaring in her next breath that the reason the U.S. is interested in the region is its rich resources: soy, sugar, sources of energy, minerals, fresh water, etc. She protested that China is interested in building “critical infrastructure” in the region, such as ports, energy, 5G, space facilities, asking, “Doesn’t this make you a little bit suspicious?”
No one (unfortunately) could accuse the United States of being interested, these days, in building critically-needed infrastructure at home, never mind helping its neighbors to the south to do so!
The Chinese Embassy issued a scathing public response to “Mrs. Richardson” on Jan. 19, contrasting the approaches of China, with its Belt and Road project aiding developing countries to get out of the poverty and debt traps, and the United States, with its dismal record of violating human rights at home and abroad, imposing sanctions, military bases, invading, etc. as Honduras has itself experienced.
