Belt and Road not going swimmingly

^ Says an American spokesman. Calls to mind the African spokesman who said, “When China comes we get a hospital. When the US comes we get a lecture.”

 

The terms of the loans were always predatory and nobody ever believed the Chinese would ever be repaid other than claiming ownership of whatever form of collateral was agreed upon.

 

China is a mess. It’s a dictatorship. It’s hard to tell if it’s fascist or communist. I subscribe to the wheel theory of history. Where fascism and communism meet together at the opposite side of freedom. Their house of cards is going to fall hard. Invading Taiwan only makes sense if it pushes the fall of the economy further down the road.

 

C'mon. The Argentines tried to restructure their debt and were successfully sued in US court by many of their creditors, and forced them into default.

Argentina debt crisis fears grow after US supreme court ruling

 

We could add the games we play with sanctions to the list too, which is basically just economic warfare. You are seriously making an "American imperialism is uplifting" argument? Its not. We use our financial clout to attempt to leverage nations into favorable outcomes for us, not them. That's exactly what China is doing. If there is a 'rising tide,' we are using it to drown the competition or dissidents. The idea that there is no cost to the way we live to the rest of the world is a fantasy that sustains us. This China nonsense is very discouraging, its made a lot of smart people very stupid and forgiving of American transgressions, guess its useful to have a bad guy.

 

Was it our government or our private corporations that exported manufacturing to China 30-40 years ago? And they did so to make more money and outcompete US manufactured goods. US Capitalism has helped China become an economic World super power. Will their economy and then their government really collapse in this century?

 

This. Politicians took big kickbacks tp approve loans that would result in national interests being lost to China. The question is will the countries honor the terms and transfer ownership or not. Sad part is the infrastructure built is built by chinese with that level of quality.

 

Its also a complicated topic. i did about 20 minutes of back story research after reading article since it was interesting and then said "shit, thats complicated".

 

Like the science thread I keep reviving. No partisan hate so no comments. Guess it should be moved to the pub

 

Argentina was never "dirt poor" like most of these countries are. They have at least some ability to pay the debt back, the question is more a matter of willingness. And being sued by private creditors is different than having the federal government go after you.

Argentina seems like it is primarily a victim of not controlling its own spending (and the high inflation that goes with that).

The U.S. used to be a horrible nation when it came to protecting corporate interests and U.S. money overseas back in the 1950's and 1960's. When our CIA was very active in changing out other countries' governments that we didn't agree with. We've advanced beyond that.

 

I disagree with almost everything you post. Amazing.

 

LOL how are smart people this naive?

 

The Argentine example was quite misinformed on his part. Private action is not the same issue being discussed. Further, having studied law and economics in La Plata and Buenos Aires I can say that outside actors are not Argentina’s issue, Argentina is. They have consistently worked themselves into financial crises through extraordinarily poor governance, ask for loans, then poorly govern and default on their loans which causes another crisis. They’re currently experiencing inflation over 100%. I feel bad for the people there since I met some truly great people but they’re their own worst enemy.

 

China = communism = BLM and Democrats

There that should help.

 

@l_boy @G8trGr8t

You guys need to get a sense of humor.