Grenada is a small island country in the Caribbean. Cricket is its national sport.
China built Grenada's National Cricket Stadium in St George's, the capital, as an ostensible $40m gift. The builder was Anhui Foreign Economic Construction, a state-owned firm. The stadium was finished in time to host matches during the Cricket World Cup in 2007. In 2025 it received a $12m Chinese-funded spruce-up. Two months before the original stadium gift was announced, Grenada's then prime minister, Keith Mitchell—a former captain of the national cricket team—formally accepted the "one-China principle", and Grenada severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan.
Twenty years on, Grenada and China remain fast friends. Chinese media noted that Dickon Mitchell, the prime minister, was the first foreign leader to visit Xi Jinping in Beijing in 2025, receiving a red-carpet welcome.
Politics is the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn't happen.