Tuesday’s Gleaner lead story, “China claps back,” highlights a reality Jamaica has long sidestepped: we are a small, strategically located island caught between two great powers, yet we too often allow others to define that relationship.

The Chinese embassy’s rebuttal to Ambassador Kari Lake relied heavily on numbers – billions in investment, thousands of jobs, scholarships, and hospital equipment. The United States, meanwhile, frames its concerns around sovereignty and long-term strategic risk. Both narratives are self-serving, and Jamaica should be wary of accepting either uncritically.

What is striking is how rarely Jamaica articulates its own cost-benefit analysis with comparable clarity. We hear about US$2.1 billion in Chinese investment, but where is the public accounting of what Jamaica has conceded in financing terms, market access, or diplomatic leverage? A partnership built on “mutual benefit” must be demonstrable from our side as well.