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China Owns A Lot of Important Things

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isha
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China Owns A Lot of Important Things

#1

Post by isha »

First confession, I don't know a lot about all of this. It is just something I have vaguely been keeping an eye on for a few years now, ever since I first heard of the Belt and Road Initiative.

Then I heard China lease or have bought quite a bit of land in Africa, to grow food for their huge population. Also to access rare minerals and ores. In fact they have so much land now that some call it a land grab. I have seen stories of Africans having trouble in their own domestic market places with competition from animals and crops under Chinese production, and a couple of awful videos of beatings. China is Africa's biggest trading partner.

Why I thought about this again is apparently Uganda's only International Airport is to fall into Chinese hands for debt default.
Some refer to this as debt trap strategy - it seems to be like loan sharking. China is taking the place of the IMF or World Bank, which also did bad things in countries to be honest. But China is one politically hegemonic power, and less likely to be held to any account than international organisations (in my opinion).

It seems China owns a lot of International sea ports, such as Greece's main port Piraeus. Lots of ports all over the world are under Chinese control now.

A good while ago there was talk of Ireland selling Coillte to Chinese interests, which properly raised objections. I see there is property investment from the Chinese in Ireland and in other parts of the EU.

It seems to me to be a new form of colonialism, just without armies. Using money as an instrument of power. One could say investment helps local communities and that is true, but there are also strategic issues that are complicated. And on the other hand it could be said that as long as all is transparent and above board what does it matter.

But handing over long term control of good sea access to one's country is not a great idea. Ports are often ancient places where the sea and land formed in a certain particular way to allow safe connection - one cannot just build another one down the road. I would not like to see our national airports or sea ports sold away from our control.

I am just interested in finding out various viewpoints about what is happening here. As I do not know that much about it.
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Banshee Bones
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Re: China Owns A Lot of Important Things

#2

Post by Banshee Bones »

It's the self induglence of the west that gave them this opportunity, Most of Africa is always going to be prone to mismanagement which opens the door to foreign influence. We allowed to China make sure it was their influence.
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Re: China Owns A Lot of Important Things

#3

Post by kadman »

Lets not forget US influence in Africa when Africom was formed.
Africa is ripe for a bit of landgrabbing, asset stripping and military bases, whoever gets their foot in the door first.

Buhari’s request for AFRICOM’s assistance in tackling the country’s current security challenges may seem good in some aspects. These include providing technical assistance, intelligence gathering and logistics to Nigerian troops engaged in different operations locally.

But asking it to put boots on the ground may be detrimental to Africans. AFRICOM is a component of the US Department of Defense and State Department. The US Defence department places emphasis on traditional security imperatives that secure the state – guns and wars – rather than the principles of human security. The general fear is that highly centralised states with dictatorial leaders may further be militarised. This will be to the detriment of citizens.
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isha
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Re: China Owns A Lot of Important Things

#4

Post by isha »

Banshee Bones wrote: Sun Nov 28, 2021 10:21 am It's the self induglence of the west that gave them this opportunity, Most of Africa is always going to be prone to mismanagement which opens the door to foreign influence. We allowed to China make sure it was their influence.
It's not just happening in Africa. It is worldwide. I think it is about money always being considered respectable*, not some culture war stuff.

*This is nothing new, of course.
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Re: China Owns A Lot of Important Things

#5

Post by kadman »

I dont know how we can do anything about preserving the planet for our childrens future, when we just carry on in the same manner.
The chinese have managed to buy a huge cobalt mine in the Congo that was in US ownership for decades, for its copper deposits. Then the cobalt was a secondary product not much valued.
Now Cobalt is of immense value for electric car batteries. Same old colonial asset grabbing at play, no matter who the owner is. The usual thing is the indigenous population does not benefit as it should.
KISANFU, Democratic Republic of Congo — Just up a red dirt road, across an expanse of tall, dew-soaked weeds, bulldozers are hollowing out a yawning new canyon that is central to the world’s urgent race against global warming.

For more than a decade, the vast expanse of untouched land was controlled by an American company. Now a Chinese mining conglomerate has bought it, and is racing to retrieve its buried treasure: millions of tons of cobalt.
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Re: China Owns A Lot of Important Things

#6

Post by CelticRambler »

isha wrote: Sun Nov 28, 2021 9:14 amIt seems China owns a lot of International sea ports, such as Greece's main port Piraeus. Lots of ports all over the world are under Chinese control now.

A good while ago there was talk of Ireland selling Coillte to Chinese interests, which properly raised objections. I see there is property investment from the Chinese in Ireland and in other parts of the EU.
You have two different things going on: the state-sponsored/state-directed pursuit of valuable primary resources, which is (as you say) just an updated, non-militaristic form of colonialism; and then good old capitalism being practised by the newly enriched Chinese middle classes, where (in China) owning property is a sign of your social status, but having lots of cash is frowned upon (mainly by the authorities). So many ordinary people-like-us in China take the profits they've made from selling "stuff" to us, and use them to buy property that we put on the market in the hope of getting a good return on what used to be called a "home" but is now treated - by us - an investment, to be sold to the highest bidder.

I don't have any particular problem with ordinary Chinese (individuals or businesses), and right now, I'm handling a project for which I've sent out tentative enquiries (supply of specialist equipment) to companies in France, Wales, England, the US and China. The only one who's got back to me with meaningful details are the Chinese. The French haven't even acknowledged receipt of my enquiry. Marine LePen and all her right-winger presidential candidate opponents can harrumph about protectionist nationalism all she wants, but if the Chinese are the only ones who can be bothered to engage in discussion, they're the ones who'll get the contract.
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Re: China Owns A Lot of Important Things

#7

Post by kadman »

Asset grabbing happened here for decades. Except it was called asset giving, and mr Bertie was an expert at it.
WE had large reserves of oil in the Porcupine Basin, which ended up , " by crookery" in the hands of the US oil companies, that we then bought back from them at a supposed reduced rate. And all this at the hands of burlington Bertie.

Who then went on to become chairman of the International Forestry Fund, whos main investor later declared bankruptcy.
But Mr Bertie wanted access to coillte's forest to have control over it. And coillte does not own the property, we do the people of Ireland when the land commision broke up large tracts of Irish property coillte was formed to manage it for the people of Ireland, not for crooks like Bertie.

We dont need colonial methods of asset stripping, we have our own home grown band of crooks called politicians, who dont share the same realty the rest of us live in.
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Re: China Owns A Lot of Important Things

#8

Post by knownunknown »

They don't own the women's tennis tournaments anymore after the WTA suspended all of their tournaments in China because of what happened to Peng Shuai. "If powerful people can suppress the voices of women and sweep allegations of sexual assault under the rug, then the basis on which the WTA was founded -equality for women - would suffer an immense setback".

Fair play to them. The NBA bent over backwards to them but the WTA are actually making a stand.
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Re: China Owns A Lot of Important Things

#9

Post by JONJO THE MISER »

Its all kicking off in the Solomon Islands due to the Chinese, big time unrest last few days with Aus and NZ army and police being flown in to control the situation.
knownunknown
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Re: China Owns A Lot of Important Things

#10

Post by knownunknown »

Amazon has grown into a powerful economic force recently, partly due to the propaganda that they offer for the CCP.
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/ama ... 021-12-17/
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Re: China Owns A Lot of Important Things

#11

Post by CelticRambler »

Oh look - a private company is forced to comply with the wishes of the national government if it wishes to trade in/on their territory.

Quite the contrast with similar sized companies (or even the same one) bribing national governments in the West to ensure that they can do pretty much anything they want. :roll:
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isha
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Re: China Owns A Lot of Important Things

#12

Post by isha »

The alert issued by the intelligence service said Ms Lee had “acted covertly” in co-ordination with the United Front Work Department (UFWD) of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

It stated: “Lee has extensive engagement with individuals across the UK political spectrum, including through the now disbanded All-Party Parliamentary Chinese in Britain Group, and may aspire to establish further APPGs to further the CCP’s agenda.”
Must confess I don't know the ins and outs of this but looks like CCP trying to own UK politicians too. Or else Boris is trying to distract from him thinking he was at a work meeting with booze and balloons.

https://www.google.ie/amp/s/www.indepen ... html%3famp
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isha
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Re: China Owns A Lot of Important Things

#13

Post by isha »

Just a short quote from quite a long article in Fortune magazine.
This is frightening, in my opinion. To have so many heavily populated countries on the brink of collapse, and experiencing such terrible poverty that people are going hungry. This is the logical fallout though from the Belt and Road initiative (in my opinion). Crazy for countries to take such huge loans and essentially have their whole economies, even vital infrastructure, as collateral.

https://fortune.com/2023/05/18/china-be ... stability/

(As a counterbalance, I have seen it said that the article is western propaganda and that China is forgiving debt - https://mronline.org/2022/08/22/china-f ... -projects/)
A dozen poor countries are facing economic instability and even collapse under the weight of hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign loans, much of them from the world’s biggest and most unforgiving government lender, China.

An Associated Press analysis of a dozen countries most indebted to China — including Pakistan, Kenya, Zambia, Laos and Mongolia — found paying back that debt is consuming an ever-greater amount of the tax revenue needed to keep schools open, provide electricity and pay for food and fuel. And it’s draining foreign currency reserves these countries use to pay interest on those loans, leaving some with just months before that money is gone.

Behind the scenes is China’s reluctance to forgive debt and its extreme secrecy about how much money it has loaned and on what terms, which has kept other major lenders from stepping in to help. On top of that is the recent discovery that borrowers have been required to put cash in hidden escrow accounts that push China to the front of the line of creditors to be paid.

Countries in AP’s analysis had as much as 50% of their foreign loans from China and most were devoting more than a third of government revenue to paying off foreign debt. Two of them, Zambia and Sri Lanka, have already gone into default, unable to make even interest payments on loans financing the construction of ports, mines and power plants.

In Pakistan, millions of textile workers have been laid off because the country has too much foreign debt and can’t afford to keep the electricity on and machines running.

In Kenya, the government has held back paychecks to thousands of civil service workers to save cash to pay foreign loans. The president’s chief economic adviser tweeted last month, “Salaries or default? Take your pick.”

Since Sri Lanka defaulted a year ago, a half-million industrial jobs have vanished, inflation has pierced 50% and more than half the population in many parts of the country has fallen into poverty.

Experts predict that unless China begins to soften its stance on its loans to poor countries, there could be a wave of more defaults and political upheavals.

“In a lot of the world, the clock has hit midnight,” said Harvard economist Ken Rogoff. “ China has moved in and left this geopolitical instability that could have long-lasting effects.”
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Re: China Owns A Lot of Important Things

#14

Post by 95438756 »

Lenovo.
Exempt from sanctions applied to other Chinese entities.

A lot of the manufacturer of production Apple products.
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isha
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Re: China Owns A Lot of Important Things

#15

Post by isha »

*Hides my Lenovo laptop* ahem.
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Re: China Owns A Lot of Important Things

#16

Post by Del.Monte »


The original non-woke version but I like it and I'm also quite partial to King Prawn omelette.
'no more blah blah blah'
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