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How China's “debt traps” work

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Re: How China's “debt traps” work

#91

Post by orangepurple »

0xDEF wrote: post #40
3seashells wrote: post #18

The multipolar World looks like the uni polar, it's just more of its crap.

There is no multipolar world. It's just the US and China. Their combined GDP is bigger than the next 33 countries combined. As a Danish person I wish the EU had actual hard power but in the end of the day Denmark doesn't have the same geopolitical interests as Hungary, Bulgaria, and Slovakia. In fact their views are the polar opposite of ours.

GDP is the wrong metric. Military strength and sustainability are the most important drivers for a country. Example: This is why North Korea is able to survive despite being blacklisted economically from most of the world. China is enabling its sustainability.

Re: How China's “debt traps” work

#93

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

oceanplexian wrote: post #46
andrepd wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The view that "you have _your_ money and then the government takes it away from you" ignores that without the society that you are inserted in, the very concept of money would be meaningless. More accurate to say is that part of the social contract for participating in a society that enables you to """make""" that money is that you have a pay a "fee", i.e. taxes (among other things, e.g. abiding by laws which are dem…

Sure, there are some beneficial things that the government does. Like roads, police, fire, regulatory agencies; all the usual things that are cited as "We live in a society" line items. But those things are a tiny minority of government spending. The VAST majority of the federal budget goes to entitlements. Another massive chunk goes to paying interest on debt because we spent money we didn't have on entitlements. An…

I don't mean to be hyperbolic, but that's how you get people (mostly children and old people) starving in the streets.

That's what those entitlements pay for.

Maybe you think that's not worthwhile, fair enough. Unfortunately for you, many of your fellow citizens and taxpayers disagree.

Re: How China's “debt traps” work

#94

Post by yorwba »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #65
pphysch wrote: post #25

For those who are curious about a serious analysis of China's foreign development policies, rather than a misinformational blog post: https://www.chathamhouse.org/2020/08/debunking-myth-debt-tra... That one is from 2020 but there are a lot of serious people looking at these complex issues.

Is the chart in the blog wrong? Because it looks like investments for Belt & Road have collapsed, which would be odd if it had been a success rather than a failure.

The report isn't arguing that it was a success rather than a failure. Their figure 1 is a similar chart, lacking a few years of data, but since the inflection point was back in 2016 that doesn't really matter.

Re: How China's “debt traps” work

#95

Post by throwawaymaths »

wheelerof4te wrote: post #67
stickfigure wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the same guy who suggested injecting disinfectant or "bringing light inside the body" to cure covid. He also continues to lie about his election loss in a desperate attempt to cling to power. Trump is shameful, but he doesn't represent the long history of the US.

"the long history of the US." You mean, the long history of overthrowing governments, imperialistic wars and debt-trapping entire nations into selling their state-owned assets to US interest groups and funds? Your memory may be short lived, but there are many of us who know and remember. And, by the way, China hasn't started invading random countries all over the world...yet.

> And, by the way, China hasn't started invading random countries all over the world...yet.

Bhutan, India, and Vietnam would have a word.

Re: How China's “debt traps” work

#96

Post by shawabawa3 »

26fingies wrote: post #82
wheelerof4te wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The majority of new properties in China — about 90% — are sold before being completed." - CNN" Not sure if this is some kind of joke. Many countries have laws that permit selling appartments when they are about 80% complete. Some have lower, some higher percentages. Just your average low-tier negative CNN propaganda, I guess.

i was gonna say - a lot of places you can put a bunch of cash down for an apartment that only exists as a picture on a sign somewhere.

In the UK you can buy "off plan", but you only pay a deposit, and that goes into escrow until you get the keys, the developer can't touch the money until then

I assume it's similar in most countries

Re: How China's “debt traps” work

#97

Post by throwawaymaths »

stickfigure wrote: post #56
jhp123 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US Imperialism is even more brazen than that. Here's a video of the US President commenting on how US troops are in Syria "only for the oil": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U10p3Tn9V5Y

This is the same guy who suggested injecting disinfectant or "bringing light inside the body" to cure covid. He also continues to lie about his election loss in a desperate attempt to cling to power. Trump is shameful, but he doesn't represent the long history of the US.

Trump didn't start syria, though. Obama did. In fact (while I don't like trump). AFAICT he is the first president in a very long time to not invade a new country.

Re: How China's “debt traps” work

#98

Post by acyou »

Our USA global empire from 1945 to present invests mostly in resource extraction in poor and underdeveloped countries. Aid comes in the form of providing food and medicine, probably the worst help that could be given to countries with virtually no infrastructure.

China pays for infrastructure to be built of the type and scale in countries that haven't seen this type of investment since their respective post-war expansionary periods, which most likely ended 60+ years ago. We Americans don't like it, because this represents moves towards the attempted changing of the guard, but we can't do anything but complain. At this point we can't invest in our own infrastructure, much less improve other countries'. But it feels like these infrastructure investments should have happened decades ago, and their net effects would have been to raise the standard of living of millions, or billions. Agreed that this plan seems to be winding down, unfortunately it doesn't seem to work.

It looks like China will actually pivot their economy to tech. Airplanes, computers, microchips, and soon, software...

Re: How China's “debt traps” work

#99

Post by greggsy »

UncleSlacky wrote: post #47
preciousoo wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“As a Kenyan official put it: Every time China visits we get a hospital, every time Britain visits we get a lecture.”

Which led to this classic exchange: https://twitter.com/stillreezy/status/1507445282778206209

That enrico account seems a bit iffy. Seems somewhat biased towards trump, Russia, China (maybe NK too?), and consistently against Biden and Ukraine (but nothing else?)?

Re: How China's “debt traps” work

#100

Post by callalex »

bpolverini wrote: post #33
hackandthink wrote: post #10

"David Graeber: Oh, absolutely. After all, the alter-globalization movement grew out of a broad global reaction to the Washington consensus, which was never any sort of consensus, but rather, a vision of the world forcibly imposed on the global South through the third world debt crisis. I was involved in “drop the debt” campaigns of various sorts since at least 2000. What got me interested in some of the philosophica…

The Government already has a monopoly on force and steals our money under the threat of imprisonment in the form of taxation: Now that money is supposed to be allocated into risky investments for abstract, unmeasureable benefits like "soft power," for the benefit of people somewhere else? That creates resentment here. It also infantilizes the Global South. How much better would it be if we eliminated the IMF, shrank…

If taxation is theft, why don’t you move to Somalia or start a cartel in a remote region of Mexico and live there? Or perhaps there are benefits you are receiving from living with a functioning government?
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