Honduras targets Chinese shops and state builder as president sits on Taiwan pledge

Honduran migration officials have summoned or placed under review 41 Chinese nationals after inspecting shops in the capital and a hospital being built by a state-owned contractor from China in the south of the country.

Teams from the National Migration Institute, working with police and intelligence officers, interviewed 86 Chinese citizens at 54 shops in Comayaguela, Tegucigalpa’s twin city and main commercial district, and told 25 of them to report for further document checks.

Migration officers also went to Choluteca, in the south, where China’s SFECO Group is building a regional hospital, and found that 16 of the 128 Chinese workers on site were in an irregular situation. The institute has not said what was wrong with their papers or whether any of them will be deported.

The inspections come nine months into the presidency of Nasry Asfura, who campaigned on restoring relations with Taiwan, which his predecessor Xiomara Castro dropped in favour of Beijing in March 2023.

Asfura has since ordered a review of the agreements Castro signed with China, but in June his foreign ministry denied holding any official talks with Taipei.

10:37

Why the US is worried about China’s growing influence in South America

Banners reading “Tegucigalpa and Comayaguela say no to Chinese shops” went up along the capital’s commercial avenues during a holiday week in early October, and it was unclear who put them there.

Days later, city hall opened its own inquiry into 70 Chinese-owned stores, after Honduran shopkeepers complained that their rivals sold goods below cost.

Fredy Casasola, the municipal police judge running the checks, told broadcaster TSi that “around 68 to 70 per cent of these businesses are operating irregularly” and that those which failed to regularise could be shut temporarily or for good.

Neither city hall nor the migration institute has said whether the shops visited by migration officers are among the 70.

Mayor Juan Diego Zelaya, whose administration is running the inquiry, said nationality played no part in the checks.

“We will not allow those who comply with the law to be at a disadvantage against those who may be operating outside it,” he said.

Hospital contract signed under Castro

The project is worth more than US$100 million and was due to be finished in November last year, but it is still under construction.

Its workforce has been under scrutiny since last year, when El Heraldo newspaper obtained health ministry records showing that Chinese nationals made up a third of the staff on site, about half of them carpenters, rebar workers and bricklayers.

“There were specific conditions for the Chinese staff who came to work to be specialised personnel that we did not have in Honduras,” Deputy Health Minister Jose Castillo said in March, adding that he had seen Chinese workers laying bricks during inspections.

Wilson Paz, who headed the migration institute under Castro, has said the workers entered the country legally.

A resolution passed by Congress in May told state agencies to audit Chinese shops for taxes, imports and the migration status of their staff.

Its sponsor, National Party lawmaker Mario Perez, said three years of ties with Beijing had brought retail stores rather than large industrial investment.

Migration chief Carlos Cordero later told lawmakers that 24,837 Chinese nationals had entered Honduras irregularly since 2014, with a spike in 2023.