Buying Africa
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Well, at least we know what our money is buying...
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"Even the African Union headquarters, located in Ethiopia, was full financed and build by China.
And Beijing's interest shows no sign of slowing. In 2018, President Xi Jinping announced the creation of a $60billion pot of Chinese money specially ear-marked for development projects in Africa.
In short: If Africa needs it, then China is supplying it. And in spades."
Where are the precious metals located? And diamonds. I need more diamonds.
Is there really any concern over China's expansion, related to their supposed desire to rule the world?
Let them spend billions on the infrastructure, that's helpful for the long haul.- Thanks, China!
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Yup, this has been going on for a long time. Mainland China has been trying to do this to win "friends"
They are trying to build a new Silk Road, called the "Belt and Road Initiative".
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@loki said in Buying Africa:
Remember it is Russia that is our greatest threat! That’s what we were told for 5 years while China ran the table. Guaranteed to be written about in history.
It's not 5 years. America has been obsessing about Russia since the 1940's.
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China throws a lot of money at Africa to build infrastructure with very little strings attached except terms like "if you cannot repay the loan we take over whatever that was built with that loan." China's loans impose no condition on improving human rights or promoting democracy, which makes them more attractive to financing from Western sources. But I do not put high odds on China dominating Africa. A few things I believe will prevent China from succeeding:
- China has pretty severe demographics problem, their population is aging fairly quickly, which will be a drag on China's economy
- Wealth disparity is another big problem in China. Very wide disparity between the haves and the have-nots, between the rural population and the city population. This does not bode well for long term political stability within China
- Racial discrimination. Short term, the Chinese look very good to the Africans compared to the Caucasians with their apartheid history. But many in mainland China discriminate against dark skin complexions, and there really isn't any widespread initiative to correct this widespread attitude. It won't take long for the Africans to wise up to this widespread discrimination and become very suspicious of everything China, if they haven't already.
As it is, I still put a higher odds of China imploding within rather than China dominating Africa as a matter of geopolitical influence.
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@axtremus said in Buying Africa:
China throws a lot of money at Africa to build infrastructure with very little strings attached except terms like "if you cannot repay the loan we take over whatever that was built with that loan." China's loans impose no condition on improving human rights or promoting democracy, which makes them more attractive to financing from Western sources. But I do not put high odds on China dominating Africa. A few things I believe will prevent China from succeeding:
- China has pretty severe demographics problem, their population is aging fairly quickly, which will be a drag on China's economy
- Wealth disparity is another big problem in China. Very wide disparity between the haves and the have-nots, between the rural population and the city population. This does not bode well for long term political stability within China
- Racial discrimination. Short term, the Chinese look very good to the Africans compared to the Caucasians with their apartheid history. But many in mainland China discriminate against dark skin complexions, and there really isn't any widespread initiative to correct this widespread attitude. It won't take long for the Africans to wise up to this widespread discrimination and become very suspicious of everything China, if they haven't already.
As it is, I still put a higher odds of China imploding within rather than China dominating Africa as a matter of geopolitical influence.
China imploding from within is a concept I heard a long time ago and China has only grown exponentially in every way since then. On some level one could reasonably assume that statement is part of their strategy to disarm everyone. I wish it were true and even believed it at one time but the evidence is such thin gruel. Make no mistake China is already making big bold and brazen moves. I do think Biden sees it but he doesn’t have his voters behind him. Russia Russia Russia is the only song they know.
