The same pattern in Africa, development projects staffed by Chinese workers in segregated company run communities.
They built a train line in Africa, had a big opening day ceremony with a local running the train. After that day... the local guy never ran the train again.
To be precise, the first railways in India were paid for by local British magnates / companies, e.g. to transport materials for other construction projects. From 1849 British companies still paid to build the railways themselves but they were given the land for free and guaranteed a 5% rate of return [0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_rail_transport_in_I...
(No-one from that branch of the family lives in India anymore. Things got rather ugly when independence happened.)
They have been. A lot of the tarmac and bridges in West Africa have been funded by Europe.
They are. That's called "International Development". What's unusual is how much China is paying out as a proportion of their national income[0], how much they're willing to turn a blind eye to giving unpleasant people and regimes money, and how willing they are to ignore problems that their development will cause in terms of debt traps. In essence, most rich country International Development programs to date have tried to have at least a semblance of doing the right thing rather than just being completely naked influence and power grabs. As noted elsewhere in this thread, it seems there's great potential for this to blow up in the faces of the Chinese, but we'll see!
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_development_aid_countr...
The Belt and Road Initiative is going to go down in history as a colossal white elephant, an extension of the domestic Chinese model of
“Let's borrow a ton of money to spend on infrastructure and keep doing it forever to pump up the economy.”
to other countries.
Thing is, even governments need to pay off loans eventually, whether in hard currency or in wrenching economic adjustment when the bubble finally pops. China hasn’t had a real economic downturn since Deng opened China up in the 80s. When it happens it’s going to be bad.
Gaining that real estate might look like a win for China, except of course now they're stuck operating it for very little profit. (Certainly less profit than the interest on the loan was planned to be, since otherwise the Sri Lankan government would've just repaid it.)
Many Chinese infrastructure projects in other countries appear irrational if you consider the Chinese government as a single actor. However, they become rational if you consider that they are a way to turn money from the coffers of the Chinese state into foreign currency in the hands of a Chinese construction company. Some of that money will certainly find its way back into the pockets of the decision makers approving the project.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magampura_Mahinda_Rajapaksa_...
It appears to me that in another decade everyone will be shocked that the Great Firewall encompasses large portions of Africa and Asia. Additionally everyone will be surprised that a lot of manufacturing has become too expensive domestically in China and is now outsourced to Africa.
At least, that is my read of the whole situation.
And there is nothing wrong with a powerful country winning influence by helping out poorer nations around the world. The US did it with the Marshall Plan, and it was a good thing for everyone involved.
In 30 years, when your economy finally catches fire and is growing 20% year-over-year, the best possible port/airport/railway locations were long ago sold to China.
The elites of a nation push for it because it gives them a chance to make a lot of money off exploiting both the colony and the government funding infrastructure.
However in the end it becomes a bottomless pit for money in sum for a nation, and in the end you cant hold onto what you tried to control anyways, because the harder you try, the more and more resentment builds up until you are forced out.
And it dosen't sound like the Chinese are too interested in making friends, more in making underhanded deals that hand them control over critical resources.
They found out it was untenable to continue being that cruel in the face of a populace that now wanted very slightly less obvious cruelty. I have never seen a compelling argument being made that it was about money, as domestic slavery and other forms of exploitation of people you basically own is always going to be nice and profitable.
In the end, the costs and benefits of having colonies more or less cancelled out.
If colonies were capable of providing wealth and economic power at scale, the UK alone would have been vastly more powerful than all 3 aforementioned nations combined. In fact you can make a reasonably persuasive argument that the UK's laser focus on colonialism rather than native industry was directly responsible for Germany's rise to begin with. The UK was far more interested in pouring economic resources into colonial ventures (especially in India), which in the end didn't yield net gains, while Germany went from a patchwork network of independent, mostly underdeveloped state, to a world superpower in less than 50 years through obsessive focus on industrial development. Plenty of British industrialists and inventors found a far more receptive audience in Germany after their attempts to raise funding at home were ignored. The German chemical industry largely owed its origins to this for instance.
There is also plenty of argument to be made that slavery as a purely economic concern is far less efficient and profitable in the long run than free men doing the same jobs.[2]
Again, its something that's very profitable for elites, but it is a handicap for a nation as a whole.
[2] https://www.economist.com/free-exchange/2013/09/27/did-slave...
Germany's industrial power is a separate issue that is directly attributable to one or two major historical events that have absolutely nothing to do with colonialism. Suffice it to say that it doesn't compare, because few other countries have gone through a similar process.
Edit: I discussed this with someone else and then I realised you are also just wrong about Germany having no colonies. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_former_German_colonies
Still, if China squanders its wealth by giving away infrastructure to the world, while the US squanders its wealth by bombing the world, I think China is winning.
Belt and road is costing the Chinese a fortune and it seems they're beginning to realise a lot of it is being wasted. They recently refused to fund a planned extension of the railway in Kenya. There has been a lot of fuss about the port in Sri Lanka that was repossessed by China, and theories that this is a deliberate strategy. That doesn't look like it's actually the case, so far it's the only example of that happening.
China doesn't seem to have any qualms with that kind of development though. I recall a tour through a city and an international airport, huge 20 lane superhighway with... just nobody using it. Ghost towns. Empty supermalls with maybe one or two shops open.
It's all investments, it's putting investor money in real estate, gambling on economy and population growth to necessitate use of the real estate and infrastructure, thus increasing the price / value of the real estate.
So on the whole it is a benefit to locals, but depending on how things were financed and who is responsible for what, it could end up being a negative.
Some countries require by law that the Chinese developers have a minimum number of local workers. This mitigates the problem somewhat and hopefully over time the locals will develop the skills to run their own projects.
In the long run, infrastructure investment benefits local communities and opens up more opportunities for the local workforce. It's almost always better to have the infrastructure built than not, earlier than later, and foreign money is a good source of capital for it.
I've often thought that but caught myself thinking I was just buying into the narrative - refreshing to hear it might be slightly less cynical than my brain would have me believe (though still undoubtedly to some degree). My assumption being the skillset to build a transnational highway and scalable mining infrastrcuture is different than doing those things at localised levels.
That's only true if the economy develops to a high enough level, fast enough, to afford to maintain the infrastructure being built that isn't actually natural to the present scale of the economy. That's a large assumption and the consequence of being wrong is disastrous for a poor country. Any time you try to force-leap a country forward, there are immense risks if the underlying economy doesn't keep up, and it won't be China that pays for it later on.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/world/asia/china-sri-lank...
https://www.phnompenhpost.com/business/chinese-own-more-90-s...
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-48729072
There are some shoddy-looking construction sites in Phnom Penh too, and precarious conditions for construction workers even on the more modern construction projects.
To get from Sihanoukville to where we were staying we had to take a main road that was constantly used by trucks getting to and from construction sites. It was a dirt road that had been torn to pieces, including major major potholes, diversions into oncoming traffic to avoid these, huge traffic jams due to this, and at one point the powerlines had collapsed across the road, and had been left there, running live with cars literally driving over them all day long. Definitely a huge accident waiting to happen.
The local infrastructure is just not able to sustain this level of development. And the unfortunate thing was, the development companies were not giving back enough to actually fix up the roads and other chaos they caused, so the locals end up worse off.