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Comment by wonderwonder | Hacker News Reader

China will dump a bunch of money into this. The project wont be completed because of corruption. The original leaders responsible for signing the deal will disappear to live in their mansions. The countries will still owe China and one day it will collect in a big way, at the end of a gun called forced economic collapse. China is going to own Africa.

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I keep hearing that trope that evil China is going to rip poor Africa to shreds, but not really seeing it so far? they have been building railroads and mines, and haven't even dropped a single bomb so far... unlike those who tell us how truly evil China's plans are.

It's already started

https://apnews.com/article/china-debt-banking-loans-financia...

No it's starting to get resolved, see recent Zambia debt restructure. The TLDR is western propaganda who owns majority of African debt wants to push PRC debt trap narrative to pressure PRC to take haircut losses while they don't. PRC said lol no, and after 2 years, traditional (i.e. IMF) and private lenders, most from west, finally agreed to debt restructuring on their end to.

It’s called debt-trap diplomacy. China already forced Tajikistan to cede territory as part of a debt forgiveness deal. I believe they took over a port in Sri Lanka as well.

Is this more or less exploitive than the western powers?

Shell will massacre villages that resist exploitation, how many massacres have the Chinese financed so far?

Off the top of my head there's the "Cultural Revolution", Tiananmen Square, the annexation of Tibet, and of course the ongoing genocide of the Uyghurs.

The Western powers have done a lot of fucked up things, but that doesn't make China the good guys.

Which are all local to their country, or depending on the point of view within close borders of their country. I wouldn't say it's the same situation.

Tibet was not their country.

What does this have to do with the west? Do the bad actions of Shell excuse those of China?

Tajikstan borders China, so they were already vulnerable to Chinese territorial claims and military action.

However, this isn't the case in Africa. If some African country (esp. an inland one) decides to default on loans to China, what's China going to do? China has almost no ability to project power on a faraway continent. Of course, China could cut off trade, but just how reliant on trade with China are African nations?

Wouldn't debts to China end up being enforced by the worldwide banking system ? It's one big inescapable machine.

>Wouldn't debts to China end up being enforced by the worldwide banking system ?

No. What gave you that crazy idea? The banking system is dominated by western nations; why would they care about backing up China's claims?

I assume that the worldwide banking system is not divided into "good creditors" and "bad creditors", it has all shades of grey. So that anyone who bucks the system is to be made into an example.

>forced Tajikistan to cede territory

Tajikstan ceded ~1300 sqkm to PRC a decade ago to settle border ratification deal from 2000s in which PRC ceded 28000 sqkm to Tajikstan. Some retarded western propaganda tried to tie this to a few billions of Tajik debt to PRC when the dispute settlement was made 10+ years before BRI was a thing.

>It's called debt-trap diplomacy

It's called Indian propaganda co-opted by west. Just like the Tajikstan claims. Poster child being Hambantota port which was India being butthurt after getting first dibs from Sri Lanka to develop port, but couldn't. Sri Lanka went to PRC after Canadian feasibility study, but the port was poorly run, hence selling 85% stake/99yr lease to China Merchant Ports in exchange for USD to service Sri Lanka's western debts that more qualifies as debt trap (~80% of foreign debt vs PRC ~10%), and seeing massive improvement in management and profitability.

Said the frog in the boiling water

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