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The first victim? Sri Lanka?
Hardly. Many countries have fallen prey to China debt-trap diplomacy. Officials world wide have been warning against it for years.
Laos lost their entire power grid to the Chinese.
Tajikistan lost mineral rights.
Sri Lanka lost the Hambantota Port for 99 years.
Pakistan has given China exclusive rights to run Gwadar Port for the next four decades.
Montenegro mortgaged itself to China and the EU has refused to bail them out. https://thehill.com/opinion/internat...rap-diplomacy/
Doing business with China is like doing business with Russia. The Germans could tell us a whole lot about that.
In the end both countries will fail. It will take a while, but the loudest voices against those two countries are being expressed by the citizens themselves as they either leave the country or simply refuse to have children.
You are just repeating Western propaganda.
Laos and Tajikistan have not lost anything, they are benefiting.
I don't know about Montenegro, but whatever they did, they made their own mistakes, just like Sri Lanka did.
I didn't hear anyone complain about the 99-year lease of Hong Kong, but people make a fuss about a mere port?!
Pakistan also benefits from its Chinese projects. They have a very modern nuclear power plant for instance. Pakistan's main problem is its corrupt politicians and American support for terrorists in the south of the country.
Germans have a lot of excellent experience doing business with Russia.
None of those countries you listed suffers from emigration or a lack of children.
To the contrary, most Chinese projects work (it is only natural that not each and every project is successful) and people benefit from it economically.
Wow, he sure is! I thought his posts were supposed to be ironic, but he really guzzles that kool-aide.
This would explain why China is building a blue-water navy with very limited amphibious capabilities. They're not interested in wasting blood and treasure on invading Taiwan; they just need air power and special forces projection to support the local governments (or rebels) in the countries they destabilize with their infrastructure debt traps.
Of course, from a Chinese perspective, resource extraction is "just business". Just like the old European colonialists.
Honestly, this is a better route for China. The western world isn't going to bother them about it, so long as they keep to Africa, South America, and the backwaters of Asia.
Could slowly developing the Global South be key to hegemony? Probably not, especially when you can barely keep your own house in order and have a ticking demographic time bomb.
Good news, though, is that "developing" is still "developing", so I can't wholly criticize China's efforts. Of course they want ROI. That doesn't make every Chinese project a "debt trap" or monstrous human trafficking operations like the scam farm "resorts" they built in Cambodia...
...just most of them.
Buyer beware. You might think "oh, we can just nationalize the infrastructure if the Chinese call back our debts," but there's several keels of CATOBAR carriers already laid in to sail down and prevent you from doing so in the future.
The only trap that is being laid is here a lies being told to a worldwide audience and you have fallen prey to it.
The Chinese debt trap is a myth being spread by western powers to smear China.
Sri Lanka's debt to China is only 10%, same as Japan's, yet we never hear about the Japanese debt trap. Gee, I wonder why.
More importantly, China has actually built infrastructure - something tangible and beneficial to the local population - with those loans, unlike money borrowed from other nations and private institutions.
Quote:
According to data from the Sri Lanka Department of External Resources, loans from China accounted for only about 10 percent of Sri Lanka’s total foreign debt in 2021, roughly the same as Japan, and much less than market borrowings and multilateral development banks. Furthermost Chinese loans are concessional and taken for infrastructure and eco-social development.
Sri Lanka's economic woes are due to corrupt and incompetent leaders that have been fleecing the country's coffers for decades.
And if you want to pin debt issues on anyone, it's from "western" countries and institutions, not China.
But of course we'll never hear this side of the story because it doesn't fit the prevailing western narrative that own global media.
The top holders of the Sri Lankan government’s debt, in the form of international sovereign bonds (ISBs), are the following firms:
BlackRock (U.S.)
Ashmore Group (Britain)
Allianz (Germany)
UBS (Switzerland)
HSBC (Britain)
JPMorgan Chase (U.S.)
Prudential (U.S.)
The Asian Development Bank and World Bank, which are thoroughly dominated by the United States, own 13% and 9% of Sri Lanka’s foreign debt, respectively.
]Global media and numerous "experts" routinely assert that Sri Lanka was forced to cede a strategically important port to China after being lured into a debt trap by easy Chinese loans.
This story has now become part of the wider narrative of how China is using the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to achieve its diplomatic and strategic aims through debt diplomacy. But it is a story based more on fiction than fact.
[...] it is a myth that the port was ceded to China because Sri Lanka faced problems paying back Chinese loans.
Sri Lanka's debt repayment problems had very little to do with Chinese loans, which comprise about 10 per cent of Sri Lanka's total foreign debt.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2021/02/china-debt-trap-diplomacy/617953/
Note the author of this article, Deborah Brautigam, an expert in Sino-African relations, another region that China is also accused of debt-trapping.
Finally, we have a local Sri Lankan speaking out.
https://archive.ph/txFfE
Quote:
The Western media accuse China of luring us into a debt trap.
But from where I’m standing, ultimate blame lies with the Western-dominated neoliberal system that keeps developing countries in a form of debt-fueled colonization.
Sri Lanka — like so many other countries struggling for solvency — remains a colony with administration outsourced to the International Monetary Fund. We still export cheap labor and resources, and import expensive finished goods — the basic colonial model. The country is still divided and conquered by local elites, while real economic control is held abroad. The I.M.F. has extended loans to Sri Lanka 16 times, always with stringent conditions. They just keep restructuring us for further exploitation by creditors.
And as much as the West blames Chinese predatory lending, only around 10 to 20 percent of Sri Lanka’s foreign debt is owed to China. The majority is owed to U.S. and European financial institutions, or Western allies like Japan. We died in a largely Western debt trap.
Yes, because the one thing India needs is another poor, Muslim majority region because they've been handling Kashmir so well.
How is anyone supposed to take your argument that it’s the Wests fault this is happening in Sri Lanka seriously when you think Sri Lanka is a Muslim majority country? You’ve exposed that you have no idea what you’re talking about
The Chinese debt trap is a myth being spread by western powers to smear China.
Sri Lanka's debt to China is only 10%, same as Japan's, yet we never hear about the Japanese debt trap. Gee, I wonder why.
The problem with that argument is that it assumes there is no Chinese hidden debt, which is not an assumption that is very likely to be true.
"Sri Lanka said that as of April last year, China accounted for about 10% of its total debt, but Moramudali said in reality that's probably more. "
Yes, because the one thing India needs is another poor, Muslim majority region because they've been handling Kashmir so well.
As poster pdw just pointed out, Sri Lanka is not Muslim majority. The Sinhalese are mostly Buddhist, and the Tamils mostly Hindu. So, Muslims only make up 10% or less, while the Buddhists and Hindus are 70% and nearly 13%, respectively.
India has been offering to assist Sri Lanka with their debt problem, recognizing the problem with having their neighbor in heavy debt to China. It is more likely the Sinhalese majority who do not want to become a province of India.
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