China has dramatically curtailed its lending in recent years. Now, it’s emerging as the largest debt collector for many of the world’s poorest nations — a shift that threatens to undermine poverty reduction efforts and fuel instability, according to a new report.
Lending for China’s Belt and Road Initiative — which includes funding for a massive series of new railways, ports and roads in the developing world — began winding down before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Peak repayment: China’s global lending, released this month by Australia’s Lowy Institute, a foreign policy think tank. The report points to diplomatic pressure within China to restructure unsustainable debt and to recover outstanding debts from abroad for the change.
Every time China visits we get a hospital, every time Britain visits we get a lecture.
~ Dr Lubinda Haabazoka, Director of the University of Zambia Graduate School of Business and former President of the Economics Association of Zambia
Except they don’t get the hospital, they get loaned money to build a hospital, and China expects them to default. Then China takes the hospital.
It’s even more obvious when it’s a shipping port. You’ve built a port for China to control.
Here comes the lecture.
No, here comes the truth. Some of you need to hear it.
The truth is that Americans will call Israelis bombing a hospital in Gaza an act of self defense while China building a hospital in Madagascar is an act of war.