Well, yes. Because that's what the sort of second/third rate journos who clog up low impact web magazines do. They latch onto something that other people pay attention to, and use it as a springboard for their relatively limited expertise and low quality analysis.
In this case you'd be advocating looking at John Bolton's blog, presuming he has one.
And you'd be advocating looking at Sergey Lavrov's or Wang Yi's blogs, presuming they have one. You must truly be lost down the rabbit hole if you can't tell the difference between criticizing Russia/China for their actions vs sharing Bolton's opinions....
Not that you ever do, in any topic ever, but I have enjoyed looking back at the absolutely nothing to say about the central thesis to the piece that of course Africans are going to choose the people not actively screwing them over at every turn. While I agree that if China were in a position to, they'd leverage these contracts more to their advantage and to the disadvantage of the Africans, the fact of the matter is is that's where the west is now and the article is 100% accurate in pointing out it's not really a hard choice for the locals on where they'd prefer their investment money comes from. And the west's response to this economic reality is just as ham-handed as their economic policy towards Africa, something else the article is 100% accurate on.
Yeah, but the tone is off. Poor countries taking "investments" from China is fundamentally not too different than poor people shopping at Walmart. Of course poorer people are going to shop at Walmart when that's where they get what they need cheapest... but that's not a refutation of legitimate criticism of Walmart. Like, you could write an article repeating how affordable Walmart's prices are, and be frequently accurate, and everyone would be asking "so, are they paying you to write this crap?"
Ok, but I'm not asking why it was written. I know the author is making money off of it. The question was about the propogandist pasting it over here.
But it's a touch different from that. Again note: I also believe China would abuse this relationship if they could and likely will when they can. But this isn't comparing lower prices, this is comparing loans that are helpful vs loans at the threat of state sponsored terrorism. Reducing that to "it's just a matter of price" is the kind of whitewashing the article is trying to fight. And pointing out that China will eventually probably morph into the new west in that regard is not a hot take as it implies you don't want that to happen but also don't acknowledge that as happening right now.
The issue with the Chinese investments is that they are reckoned to be relatively poor investments. There are loads of Western companies willing to take money to build stuff, but they're very interested in the returns. China is to a large extent picking up the lower value (thus higher risk) investments. On one level, fair enough. But on another, the problem with such investments is they may be unwise, and load countries up with debt for relatively little return. So, is that going to come back and bite them? And what might these Chinese companies do to ensure they get paid back?
I'm not going to outright dismiss speculation like the article did, and I'm sure that's what your people in Africa are thinking. But they're still taking these deals because there's exactly one alternative and it's not a matter of speculation what they'll do to recoup anything.
One of the reasons some African countries have had massive debt problems is ill-considered use of investment and corruption: plans that have sprayed money around without actually delivering much gain. We could use the analogy of an economic bubble, where too much easy money inflates share values beyond sustainability. Consequently there is very much a live issue about whether this is not just repeating the errors of the past. We can however say about China that it's the devil they don't know.
Because at this moment, our countries inflict genocide on the Africans when they come up short and at the moment, the oppressive, authoritarian, bullying country considerably worse than our own... restructures the debt and allows them more time to pay it off. I can only say "I don't believe China will always be like that" so many times before I have to point out that they aren't like that right now, the only countries that are all these things you're afraid of right now are ours. The article taking the Chinese at face value is small potatoes compared to normal coverage of China in Africa where there's deep insinuations of a Chinese takeover without acknowledging what the West has done and continues to do there. If it's a sin to take the Chinese at their word, then the normal coverage of bringing in perennial liars to share their "expert opinion" on Africa and just nodding along is far far worse.
I think we need to remember that debt is debt. China has loaded Africa up with a lot of debt. If those investments don't work out well for those countries, they'll be paying back their debts and making less than they borrowed - and it's not like China is all their debt, or even in most cases half. One can argue nobody forced African countries to take on those loans, but again, the history here is not pretty.
Not to get too far into pointing out things like Hollywood movies having their scripts approved by the DoD and other such funness that paints our focus on freedoms a bit hollow, even if it's better than China... but really you've just come right back around to what the article is criticizing and I absolutely agree with the article on this point. Africans probably don't give a shit about the war between whiskey and baiju. Objectively they know that the West has fucked them over and committed ethnic cleansing against them. The Chinese aren't. Like yes, we can say that we don't cleanse our own people and China seems to be doing it to theirs, but we commit atrocities in Africa and the Chinese don't. The Chinese offer better terms for their investments. They're better neighbors to the Africans.
This is an extremely well-written post, so thank you for putting more nuance and context into the discussion.
Well it's better than being a perpetually illiterate centrist since I said several posts up that ideally neither group would be the ones providing loans since it could be intertwined with politics.
:V
I mean, we're both enjoying one of the effects right now, in that we're posting gov-critical posts on this forum.
He's the spiritual leader of 1.3 billion Catholics. What he says affects the thoughts of tens of millions of people at a bare minimum. He says progressive opinions for war, refugees, and the economy, and people praise him for that. But he then goes on to say people who are homosexual shouldn't get married and have sex. There are moderate republicans with a better opinion on abortion, and LGBTQ than he has.
