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In September of this year, Hurricane Dorian basically flattened Marsh Harbour on Central Abaco Island in the Bahamas. Devastating winds of 240 miles per hour and an 18-foot storm surge wiped out large portions of the island, including two areas of extreme poverty, “The Mudd” and “The Peas” where many Haitian immigrants were living.

The government has since fenced off that area, bulldozed it and burned it so residents cannot return.

 

Meanwhile, there was one area not destroyed by the hurricane. It is the China Harbor, built by China Harbour Engineering Company (CHEC) Americas. Ground was quietly broken on the project in 2015, on 45 acres of land on a small island of less than 4,000 inhabitants, essentially out in the middle of nowhere — less than 200 miles from Fort Lauderdale, FL.

Well, there are far fewer than 4,000 inhabitants now because many were displaced by the storm. The “official” death toll for the storm was less than 100, but it is impossible to know where everyone ended up.

 

The Chinese complex was completed but strangely, has never been used. And now some people on the ground are asking some disturbing questions.

A US manufacturer of fishing equipment who was active in the relief effort is beginning to raise the alarm:

This port is an absolute albatross. No reason for it to exist at all except for the Bahamian Government to be getting paid off by the Chinese to give away their resources.

We brought a ship full of building supplies there for Central Abaco. The Marsh Harbour area that was worst hit and also some of the suburbs to the south that have 50-200 homes in them, and it was pulling teeth to get these people to go up to that port and get ANYTHING. It could have been $10,000 cash or it could have been a truckload of lumber (which it was on that mission). They would not go make that drive “all the way up to the Chinese port.”

The location of the port and everything about it makes no sense for the island logistically.

Every single person we have been working with, and have established a great relationship, has asked us to “help stop the Chinese” at this point.

 

His conclusion — and the conclusion he says many of the locals are coming to — is that the Nassau government is selling the former shantytown areas to the Chinese, after they already accepted the $40 million to build the port in the first place.

 

But why? The island’s main economy (at least before Dorian) was based on tourism and spiny lobster.

 

However, there is oil in the Bahamas.

The Bahamas Oil Refining Company International Limited (BORCO) at Freeport Industrial Port, Bahamas, is the largest oil storage facility in the Caribbean. And according to the Bahamas Petroleum Company’s website, oil and gas production and exploration is active in the area. Freeport is about 100 miles from Abaco.

So far, all the Chinese have built is a port. But a technique called “horizontal drilling” would allow reserves to be tapped many miles away, and more than a mile below the surface.

Or is there another reason China wants a port less than 200 miles from US waters? Seems it’s a bit of stretch to think they just want to bring in a bunch more sneakers and clothing.

Right now, our Congress and media are obsessed with a phone conversation President Trump had with the president of Ukraine regarding whether Joe Biden and his son Hunter did anything un-kosher.

 

Meanwhile, China is quietly building a port effectively a stone’s throw from Florida. And no one seems to care.

 

 

 

Nine Line is an American Clothing Company with American made Apparel and Accessories- Veteran Owned and Operated