For those who talks about evil East must read Jhon Perkins Economic Hitman and they will find China innocent.
That only means that the US DOES rely on economic hitmen, it doesn't necessarily mean China does NOT have economic hitmen.
Italy Joins China's New Silk Road Project
81–90 of 164 posts
Re: Italy Joins China's New Silk Road Project
#82China is doing what is a great advancement for the world: integrating east and west, and in the process bringing the long forgotten areas in the middle east into the world trading order. The more investment in the Silk road, the more we will have a robust economic system integrating countries that until now were forgotten by the previous world order.
The idea looks good on paper, it will be important to keep an eye on the underlying actions that are made to ensure it is not used for nefarious reasons. This part is specially difficult when transparency is lacking.
Right, I don't quite understand why there's so much secrecy around OBOR projects if the CCP really believes these deals are a partly altruistic and fully mutually beneficial agreement. It would seem to be be in their interest to publicize the terms if that were the case.
Especially given the CCP's documented history with bribing foreign leaders to agree to similar deals.
Re: Italy Joins China's New Silk Road Project
#83Is there any knowledge on why East Asian Tiger economies do so well with state backing ? The major takeaway from the 'Princes of Yen' by Richard Werner is about how Japan soared from a destroyed country to an economic powerhouse, before being brought down by the bankers at the BOJ, ostensibly to change the system from a 'state backed economy' to a US-styled one. Ditto with the Asian tigers in Thailand, S Korea etc. S…
> I don’t see what the big deal is TBH The main issue is that Italy is part of the EU, and also one of its major economies. The argument about unfairness is absolutely not a joke. In fact, it’s the main point. Doing business in China as a foreign-owned company in many sectors of the economy is, simply put, a huge challenge, when not outright impossible. This is mainly due to opaque or protectionist regulations. State…
It's not that I understand the argument, my point was that many of the mechanisms that provided enormous advantages to Western nations is often rarely spoken about. For instance, US can often infuse large amounts of cash through the central bank because it's position as the global reserve renders it very unsusceptible to inflation. There is also the inexorable power of WTO/IMF and these "international" agencies that are often steered entirely for the benefit of the US and its allies.
I understand this may not apply to EU nations to the same extent, but then there are all sorts of historical inequities in their favor (esp. Britain) that one wonders if this new found "righteousness" is a bit ahistorical.
Consider India - it's basically run by erstwhile cronies of the British empire, who basically transferred all of its generational wealth to the city in little under 200 years. This while it was made into a cocaine tanker to destroy China. It was made to fight European wars, while being footed with the bill, and now the British groan about the pittance they pay India in foreign aid. Never mind that this aid, is mostly geared towards the Anglo-Saxon eugenics schemes of all sorts.
India currently owes about half a trillion to the IMF, after being run by a IMF crony, and his Italian mistress for 10 years. It's easy to guess what the IMF will ask for (far more loudly) when it inevitably goes belly up.
Re: Italy Joins China's New Silk Road Project
#84China is doing what is a great advancement for the world: integrating east and west, and in the process bringing the long forgotten areas in the middle east into the world trading order. The more investment in the Silk road, the more we will have a robust economic system integrating countries that until now were forgotten by the previous world order.
They weren't 'forgotten' they were made irrelevant through technology (airplanes, shipping containers, etc) and geo-political trends (the fall of the ottoman empire). As great as it sounds on paper there are quite a few economists who are skeptical about the ROI from all of these investments. But I do like how bold it is, which you rarely find in western countries (large scale infrastructure projects). They can barel…
Some of it is probably a debt trap. The Djibouti port and Hambantota are perhaps warning signs of things to come.
Re: Italy Joins China's New Silk Road Project
#85For those who talks about evil East must read Jhon Perkins Economic Hitman and they will find China innocent.
That only means that the US DOES rely on economic hitmen, it doesn't necessarily mean China does NOT have economic hitmen.
umm... OBOR could the Chinese version of IMF and World bank, who knows?
Re: Italy Joins China's New Silk Road Project
#86Re: Italy Joins China's New Silk Road Project
#87> "The seemingly innocuous move comes at a sensitive time for Europe and the European Union, where there is suddenly a great deal of trepidation not only about China, but about working out how Europe or the EU should adapt and react to a changing world," Prof Frankopan told the BBC. Forgive my ignorance, but aren't many EU decisions required to be unanimous? So if China has close ties to Italy, could it use it's infl…
Yes. It occurred to me that the EU's expansion occurred during a lull in great power politics.
Re: Italy Joins China's New Silk Road Project
#88Hmm. Italy allies with an evil dictatorship that has a concentration camps for millions of minorities, and prosecutes religion by shutting down churches and jailing pastors. Sounds familiar...
Trolling like this will get you banned here. Please don't.
Also, it looks like this account is using HN primarily for political and nationalistic battle. We ban accounts that do that, because it destroys the intellectual curiosity HN exists for. Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the spirit of this site to heart? We'd be grateful.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19470535 and marked it off-topic.
Re: Italy Joins China's New Silk Road Project
#89Centralised planning will beat democratised decision making if they indeed manage to respond in time to a changing environment. The advancements in tech and communication allows you today to be more effective than ever. Think about global corporations with offices around the world. They are effectively operating under a centralised model and they do it very well. What China learnt in the past 4 decades was how to man…
The belt and road initiative is actually a response to the failure of Chinese central planning. So much of China's economy is specialized in construction at this point that they can't risk the mass unemployment that would result from popping the construction bubble, so instead they're doing everything they can--building high speed trains to nowhere, building infrastructure in other countries, building entire cities t…
Also, infrastructure does not lead to economic growth. Quite the other way around, really.
Re: Italy Joins China's New Silk Road Project
#90For those who talks about evil East must read Jhon Perkins Economic Hitman and they will find China innocent.
Please don't start doing nationalistic flamewar again on HN. I realize it's hard to resist, when other people are posting provocative comments. But taking the thread further in the low-information, high-agitation direction is exactly the wrong thing to do here.