Features | Diplomacy | East Asia

China’s Advance in the Bahamas

Beijing’s presence in the Bahamas and its military implications for the U.S. are often overshadowed by discussion of Chinese activities elsewhere in the region.

The December 2025, the U.S. National Security Strategy (NSS) committed the U.S. to resisting influence by extrahemispheric actors, including control over strategic assets and shipping corridors in the Western Hemisphere. Today, China has accumulated a strategically problematic commercial presence and web of influence relationships in the Bahamas. The archipelago is just 80 kilometers from the United States at its closest point, nearer than Cuba. U.S. military maritime routes for deploying and sustaining forces go through the islands, which the State Department has called the U.S. “third border.”

Beijing’s presence in the Bahamas and its military implications for the U.S. are often overshadowed by discussion of Chinese activities in Cuba, the Panama Canal, the Port of Chancay, Peru, or the “Deep Space Radar” facility in Neuquen, Argentina. However, China’s influence in the Bahamas is just as problematic, both in peacetime and if the U.S. had to transit through the archipelago to deploy and sustain forces supporting action against the Chinese in the Indo-Pacific. While that presence appears more commercial and political than military, it includes a labyrinth of China-controlled businesses in the Bahamas and relationships with its political, military, and commercial figures that could give Beijing options to observe – and potentially threaten – U.S. forces.

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The December 2025, the U.S. National Security Strategy (NSS) committed the U.S. to resisting influence by extrahemispheric actors, including control over strategic assets and shipping corridors in the Western Hemisphere. Today, China has accumulated a strategically problematic commercial presence and web of influence relationships in the Bahamas. The archipelago is just 80 kilometers from the United States at its closest point, nearer than Cuba. U.S.........

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