Funny Events of the "Woke" world
- Thread starter CriticalGaming
- Start date
No. Let's be clear here, it's a lot better than China. Here in the West, we're (at last) starting to tear down they statues that the elites built to honour rich slave owners. In China, they're tearing down the statues remembering the state's brutalisation of their own population. Actually, in a way that's a remarkably trivial thing when I think on it, in the context of suffocating social repression of over a billion people.
Oh, I'm most definitely not arguing Africans should be denied their autonomy. If there's money on offer they can borrow to invest in stuff they want, it's their business if they want to borrow it. I just refuse to pretend it's not advancing China's geopolitical interests, and lent by China for the primary benefit of China, with no charity or love for the borrower. I wish the Africans all the best: I very much hope that their borrowing turns out okay. I'm just incredibly mindful of the chaos that debt wrought on the continent for decades; debt that was to a large extent successfully tackled about 20 years ago. Let's not go back to those days.
Correct. China's interests in Africa can basically be boiled down to securing resources and building a network of 'soft power'/influence.
I'm just honestly surprised you went full Team America here, wanting to export Freedom(tm). But yeah, I'm not a China apologist, I've no interest in living there. I'm just not going to go full jingoist in the other direction and act like we're that far above them on these scales.
I.. I did say that at some point China can turn on them... multiple times I said this...
Wait excuse me? Are you implying the IMF was out of Africa 20 years ago and the West wasn't meddling in the continent over development and exploitation? The IMF is still meddling in Africa to this day trying to get them to become "economically liberal", which is all the code phrases you need for "installing autocrats who run slave mines".
Be careful of treating "Africa" as a single place with a single cultural mentality and a single geopolitical alignment. Africa is an enormous continent, and each country in Africa has its own political situation and its own issues. Yes, all African countries are unified by a shared experience of Western colonialism (and Western neocolonialism) but that doesn't necessarily translate to a single African consciousness. Some African countries have close ties to Western countries. Many have close ties to the countries that colonized them. Countries like the UK and the Netherlands are massive investors in African economies.
What China is doing in Africa now is actually not particularly different from what "the West" was already doing, and I mean that in both a positive and a negative sense. Using investment and developmental aid as a means of fostering dependence and creating soft power is the most classic neocolonial move in the book, particularly if you're investing in infrastructural development in a country (so that you can get easier access to its resources).
This is not a situation of good China vs. the bad West. Noone is investing in Africa out of altruism, they expect returns, financially or diplomatically.
The only bright side really is that a multi-polar geopolitical situation offers opportunities for weaker economies to play foreign powers off against each other and create deadlocks of influence. I think countries in Africa should be looking at Mongolia's situation as a model for how to deal with foreign investment.
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There are correct things here, but also, bruh.
And saying there's not really a difference at this moment is a slap in the face, there is a world of difference between how the Chinese are acting at this particular moment and how the West has acted for centuries. But I love this, we have an article discussing how Western media portrays a geopolitical rival in a deceptive and underhanded manner for the benefit of local exploitation and we're not allowed to talk about it because China. What about China? Who cares, China.Me earlier in the thread said:
To be fair, had anyone else posted the article, including you likely, it wouldn't have turned out that way. An article in defense of China, and an article in defense of China linked by the resident tankie, really aren't the same discussion prompt.
China is doing it globally. The Belt and Road Initiative is nothing if not ambitious.
Ehhhhhh, maybe. But certainly at this point I'm doing more of the arguing, and have stressed that I'm not interested in upholding the honor of whatever minister of China is pinky promising they'll never do wrong.
I don't necessarily buy it.
I can buy that the Chinese are offering something better at this particular moment, but it's not like "the West" has never made offers to developing economies that seemed good at that particular moment. How do you think so many African countries ended up with ridiculous levels of external debt?
The history of Western neocolonialism in Africa is not an endless parade of transparent moustache twirling villainy. Heck, one of the most effective means of controlling African economies right now is, ironically, debt relief. The wealthiest countries in the world "selflessly" agreeing to cancel debt owed by the poorest countries seems great, but of course those wealthy countries get to attach whatever conditions they want, and right now the conditions are "organize your economy in this way (so that we can benefit from it at the expense of your citizens)".
Yes, exactly, the West has installed dictators, funded ethnic cleansing, and stripped away the rights of citizens. China hasn't. That is a real material difference. As of right now, China just restructures debt, which is a far far cry from those things. That's why taking Chinese loans is outstripping the popularity of Western loans.
I mean, in order to beat out China on the continent of Africa, the US could just offer a better deal, yeah?
I mean, we can't, because our government isn't set up that way and it's socialism, but you know, theoretically
I mean, we can't, because our government isn't set up that way and it's socialism, but you know, theoretically
On a bright side the EU does have that ambition and wants to set up multi billion investments in Africa.
aaah wait... no, some member states are quibbling over it... god damn EU bureaucracy.
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No. Easier to just drone bomb weddings and train people to do military coups.
From China's POV it's not about the US per se it's about building and maintaining the economic, diplomatic and military strength to not have to worry about foreign powers (mostly 'The West') handing them the shitty end of the stick again (see: Chinese History from The Opium Wars through to the PRCs assumption of it's UN Security Council permanent seat in 1971).
As for the US's inability to abide rivals, the US probably shouldn't have led the neoliberal charge into turning China into the global economy's engine if they were going to have a sook about it afterward.
No one likes having to go outside their core competencies.
I mean, sure, but is that because of an unwillingness to support dictatorships, or is that because there aren't many dictatorships left in Africa? It's not like Chinese strategic partners in Africa don't include dictatorships (Angola, for example, which has also received billions in loans from Chinese state banks which it will totally be able to pay back despite being one of the most corrupt countries in the continent). There are many reasons for that, but you could make an argument that "the West" has played an important role by rewarding economic and political liberalization and, for example, excluding dictatorships from debt relief schemes. Now personally, I think that would be a little naïve, I think it's far more relevant now to look at the way in which neo-Imperalist powers exploit things like government corruption or economic pressure in order to subvert democratic processes, something which China absolutely has a proven history of doing.
"Funded ethnic cleansing" is a nebulous term. For example, one of the largest recipients of Chinese investment in Africa is the DRC. The DRC has a long and ongoing history of ethnic conflicts leading to massacres or mass-displacements, with the army sometimes getting involved or tacitly supporting one side or the other. Is investing in the DRCs economy "funding ethnic cleansing?" If not, what is the difference?
Nice as it would be, I don't really buy that every country or individual whose ancestors have historically suffered at the hands of Western colonialism is imbued with some radical anticolonial consciousness that aligns them against "the West". I don't believe that an entire continent is maintaining some exhaustive list of historical grievances against a compass direction and factoring that into all contemporary political decisions, if nothing else because that's not how a cultural hegemony works. Part of the ability of "the West" to continue to exploit the formerly colonized world has been dependent on the ability to foster the idea of shared interests, and for many people that shared interest is a reality because they have staked their own political fortunes on Western alignment. China will be no different.
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Are we limiting this conversation to Africa only still? Because China has very much done all of those. It just hasn't had the reach to do so outside of East Asia yet (something which these B&R projects might change).
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