Hutchison Whampoa May Bid on Howard Air Force Base

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Dec 20, 1999 | by J. Michael Waller

Will a Chinese company take over a former major U.S. Air Force base, just as it has taken ports at both ends of the Panama Canal? In an October Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Inhofe predicted that interests tied to the Chinese military will take control of Howard Air Force Base in Panama.

On the other side of the aisle, Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the committee, belittled such concerns, saying, "Hutchison has no lease rights at the moment to an air facility or runway there."

At the moment, perhaps. But Inhofe's prediction might come true. Word from Panama is that Hutchison Whampoa, the Hong Kong-based maritime giant whose chairman is part of the Communist Chinese government's trade and financial machinery, is one of five expected bidders for Howard. Panamanian newspapers have named Hutchison Whampoa in a list of five U..S., European and Asian companies likely to bid on the 4,300-acre facility, which Panama's Interoceanic Region Authority calls a potential site for air freight and port operations, export processing zones and industrial parks. Howard was turned over on Nov. 1, and Panama has just begun soliciting bids.

Top Panamanian journalist Tomas Cabal and others are concerned that Communist Chinese interests might bribe their way into controlling Howard. The Federal Maritime Commission and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee found that the bidding processes by which Hutchison Whampoa wrested leasing rights to the Atlantic port of Cristobal and the Pacific port of Balboa were riddled with corruption. The Clinton administration has tried to make the issue disappear.

Howard supported most air operations for the U.S. Southern Command, or SOUTHCOM, and was a major base for antidrug operations. SOUTHCOM Commander Gen. Charles E. Wilhelm recently told the Senate that on average, the United States ran 2,000 counterdrug missions out of Howard every year.

Some senior senators, including Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi, are concerned about Hutchison Whampoa because of the ties of its chairman, billionaire Li Kashing, with the Chinese government's trade arm and with the People's Liberation Army, or PLA. Hutchison Whampoa also has strong ties with COSCO, the China Ocean Shipping Co., which has been described as the PLA merchant marine.

On learning that Howard Air Force Base was on the block, Inhofe said, "I'll just go ahead and predict and get on the record right now that I anticipate who will end up owning this, and I think it's going to be one of the Chinese groups, whether or not it's Hutchison Whampoa or COSCO, or whoever it is."

Beijing's propaganda apparatus has rushed to deflect criticism of Hutchison Whampoa, using the Clinton administration as a foil. "U.S. military and State Department officials," the government-controlled Xinhua "news" service trumpeted, "said that China posed no threat to the security of the Panama Canal or the United States after the U.S. withdraws from the canal by the end of the year."

Renmin Ribao, the daily publication of China's Communist Party Central Committee, which is known in English as the People's Daily, said that senators such as Inhofe "rudely and unreasonably criticized China," calling them "unwilling to abandon their overlord status in another country's territory."

RELATED ARTICLE: Panama Sensitive to U.S. Concerns About China

The new government of Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso is sensitive to U.S. concerns that her predecessor, Ernesto Perez Balladares, gave Beijing control of key parts of the waterway. The Taiwan Central News Agency reports that Beijing's top official in Panama, Ju Yijye, was not invited to the Dec. 14 handover ceremony, "despite the fact that mainland Chinese ships are currently the third-largest user in the world of the Panama Canal and that the Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa has obtained port licenses for the canal."