A Tale of Two Regions

This paper offers reflections on Between Caribbean and Chinese Economic Development: Third World Solidarity, Arthur Lewis, Primitive Accumulation and the Belt and Road Initiative, an essay by Yue Qiu and Paget Henry which presents the economic thought of W. A. Lewis as a lens through which the divergent development paths of China and the Caribbean in the early twenty-first century can be understood. The paper identifies three gaps in Qiu and Henry’s explanations for China-Caribbean divergent development paths, and their varied application of Lewis: (a) their understating of the objective internal features of the English-Caribbean which frustrated the Caribbean’s adoption of a Lewisian phase; (b) their under-estimation of the hemispheric and historical imperialist and colonial forces which have denied Caribbean internal control of internal economic policy-making and; (c) their denial of the inherent “radicalism” of Lewis and their failure to acknowledge a minimal nationalist and socialist agenda as a necessary condition of any Lewisian application. The paper concludes by offering normative prescriptions for how the English-Caribbean might seize upon the current China moment and re-apply Lewis to build upon its current development trajectory

Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Island Studies and Pacific Affairs · Travel Writing and Literature