Someone watch this and lemme know how much is pure western c o p e.
His thesis is that the BRI is failing because China isn’t directly profiting off of it. Especially in the last few years, the international economy has downturned and the Chinese government has bailed out a lot of its partners either through currency exchanges or straight up forgiving loans. This ignores the fact that the goal of the BRI was never to make money by loaning it to other countries - it’s like saying that the US Navy is a failure because we don’t literally plunder enemy ships with it (except when we do lmao).
I am not going to watch the video, but there is a half truth to this. Because of the slowdown of the economy, particularly in the developing world, due to COVID, they had to write off larger amounts of debt than they expected. This isn’t a problem because they wanted profits directly from it, but that the original ambition was to continue this process by taking the money from the repayments and use that to give out more loans for development. So China had to take the losses from writing off debts and that has slowed down and scaled back some of the ambitions of BRI.
Seems mostly like cope and a misunderstanding of the BRI project. The cope seems to primarily be a pivot for the ‘debt trap diplomacy’ narrative that has increasingly eroded. While there have been setbacks (many of which have likely been ignited by imperialist influence), the primary problem this guy is looking at as for their purported failing is the concept that China has been making a lot of ‘bad loans’ aka non-profitable loans, and China has been bailing out countries who have taken loans from them and are unable to pay them back, largely due to the recent economic downturn. My primary response to this is that while China would probably prefer that all of their loans had good returns and both parties benefited from the trade, the BRI is part of a broader diplomatic program from China, and they make these bailouts & loans in order to elevate their international presence as both trusted trade partner (in stark contrast to the USA) and diplomatic peacekeeper (see the recent Iran/Saudia talks for an example). Is it possible that these bad loans might cause a shift in policy regarding Loans in the BRI? Sure, however, it’s rather early to say that it’s failing, lol. It is much more likely for one to see policy change as conditions change, and that is only if these loans are seen to be a significant issue by the PRC and not part of the operating cost of the initiative.
What’s funny to me is that US public education teaches us that the Marshall Plan was this altruistic project undertaken by the US to revive a war-torn Europe no strings attached (so long as they join the “democratic” world). In reality, it was blatant US imperialism which all but ensured American influence (both to capture European markets and to contain the Soviets with powerful if subservient allies), but just so happened to be also beneficial to the recipients at the time so it was a “win-win”.
But because Orientalism and Anticommunism are also drilled into our minds at a young age, it never occurs to many Americans that the Chinese (and to a lesser extent the Russians, albeit for the interests of their Bourgeoisie) are engaging in a similar plan with peoples of the Global South. Not even a more critical “analysis” which considers the BRI Chinese Imperialism but one that’s beneficial for all parties involved. It’s just those sneaky red orientals trying to exploit the “dumb non-whites who don’t know any better” (who are choosing the Chinese over the West because reasons), and undermine our undeniably positive influence on the world.
Education system? Marshall plan? We didn’t learn anything about the aftermath of WWII other than the US occupied Japan and Germany and then the Korean War happened next.
All of it is pure :cope:
these dollar-denominated debt is always at risk of being compromised by US financial institutions, if they so wished to.
How would this work?
even the US empire doesn’t fully realize the full extent of the power of dollar hegemony
Why would this be? I assume the economists and business people would know what is possible and they would be able to explain it to the politicians.
Why would this be? I assume the economists and business people would know what is possible and they would be able to explain it to the politicians.
michael hudson did at one time say that people in the government had to read his book to understand just how powerful and insidious the US system is at recycling the rest of the world’s surplus
think about how you’d go about actually arguing for policy one way or the other with the basis of superimperialism. ‘look we literally are the world government right now, everyone who wants access to the world market needs dollars, we could easily print 10 trillion greenbacks and cover this miserable world with cutting edge infrastructure’ is not something you can formulate that easily. the internal logic of american political systems haven’t caught up with US power. it still thinks in terms of balancing budgets that others pay for and starving beasts that others exist to feed. it was called the end of history and it wasn’t just out of arrogance, the US won extremely hard. so hard that it can’t really believe when someone says that student debt is dumb and can easily be waived off or that the economy runs on printing, inflation and financial allocation rather than labour and investment.
so what you’re left with is the easiest possible way to channel that financial power: military build up. if the world is on fire and there’s a terrorist in every corner then you can’t simply NOT cut those checks to the pentagon.
we could easily print 10 trillion greenbacks and cover this miserable world with cutting edge infrastructure’
I would guess this would still depend on having enough labor and means of production to actually develop the technology and infrastructure, right?
But, say the USA was actually the USSA, then they can give everyone enough money to buy the necessities of life, and allow them to spend time doing what they want? And this wouldn’t increase inflation to the point where buying the necessities get out of reach?
Man, I really need to go read that book to understand how this bs works.
you can block their dollar transaction and there’s nothing they can do about it?
So… if I have $10m, and I use it to, uh, buy a bridge in Kenya…the US can say “no fuck off”? How does that work? Can they stop it in a way other than by pressuring Kenya to not accept it?
both scenarios are the same and nothing has changed about your financial position?
Maybe I’m being a dumdum. But…practically your situation hasn’t changed, right? If everything increases at the same rate, then only the numbers get bigger?
Unless there are things which money can buy that doesn’t increase in price. Like labour power, usually. Or when govts give big corpos $1 trillion in loans they use to buy real shit for essentially free.
According to neoclassical theory, the answer is yes, nothing has changed, because you can still get 10 units of the same item, which is completely absurd that doesn’t pass even the slightest bit of scrutiny with common sense.
I think you need to elaborate more here to help me understand why this would be “completely absurd”. In your example, the person still has the same buying power one year later (assuming everything else is inflating at the same rate). I think I know where you’re going with it, but it’s not exactly apparent as you’ve presented here.
I assume the economists and business people would know what is possible and they would be able to explain it to the politicians.
They really don’t. Maybe they have a better understanding now, but Michael Hudson’s book was most popular with the CIA back when it first came out because even they failed to grasp their own system. He was also scheduled to explain the concepts to the POTUS at the time.
Giving dollars to small countries also allows them to settle debts in USD. China gives DRC $50M, Congo funds infrastructure projects in their native currency, and applies that $50M to their debt thus reducing their debt to the US and gaining some independence. This will eventually allow China to step in and propose trading with RMB as the need for dollars to pay off IMF loans goes away.
Brought to you by Nebula oh :anglo-burn:
If China was in such dire times and their plans falling apart, then why are more and more MAJOR countries moving to the Yaun currency in trade? :cope:
