1.12.22 - Just some roundup of things and so a blog post more about deconstructing lies about China and I, in the process, also learned a good deal more about China including seeing more of it in person on the ground - (looks really nice - would be very cool to visit some time).
Bismallah...
Truth - (I subscribe myself to the truth - Truth always prevails (falsehood perishes). Of course I don't know everything, am just a human, 36 year old American man).
Around 5 weeks ago - Evidence: CHINA just became the new global LEADER | APEC, G20, ASEAN numuves•13K views The world is changing fast and many of us would never have believed that we'd see the return of India and China to their former economic and military heights in our lifetimes. But as multipolarity...
Following (the above followed) this actually...---------------------------- Watch watch :
The Russian sledgehammer is beginning to fall in Ukraine
Straight Calls with Douglas Macgregor • 99K views
Straight Calls with Douglas Macgregor (24) - Your home for analysis of breaking news and in-depth discussion of current geopolitical events in the United states and the world. Geopolitics....
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"I discovered that the Keynes that I had been taught was not the right Keynes historically. This is one of the two or three most famous economists in history. So how could we have gotten him...
***Help us reach 300,000 subscribers! We are very close to reaching this important milestone but need your assistance. Please like and subscribe and get your family and friends to do so as...
What Is Wrong With Globalization? | Economics for People with Ha-Joon Chang
New Economic Thinking • 112K views
Across the world we’re seeing governments and popular movements come to power that are opposed to globalization. Why? In this third lecture in INET’s “Economics For People” series,...
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Debunking the Uyghur "genocide" narrative:
Previously...:
These next two are from Chinese media:
---------- China Protests Debunked :
Recorded on, or uploaded atleast, on 12.28.22 (!) :
Wow - Looks nice:
Some of the comments have some questionable things in them - I don't know everything but...yeah.
Watched a little bit of this - Yeah...: vlogger DESTROYS Western "news" on China protests numuves • 15K views We all know that Western media is the most unreliable source for information but it's always good to be reminded of how bad they're lying to us. Numuves destroys this Western media clip trying...
Walking ALONE at 1AM in Chinese CITY numuves • 33K views This vlog really HAS IT ALL. 1) A solo walk through a massive Chinese city that you've never heard of! 2) A real snapshot of what ZERO COVID REALLY looks like which MSM never shows you. 3) A homeless Chinese dude which no vlogger has "found" yet
Watched a little bit, interesting - I'm not into the super-fast videos of TikTok, I don't have, nor never really saw the utility of using TikTok...though some clips and stuff are pretty entertaining:
Chinese Tiktoks #7: Viral in China, Unseen in the West | Peaceful chill vids numuves• 504K views Chinese tiktok (douyin) is literally the biggest real-time talent show on Earth! Unfortunately, because of politics, Western media never broadcast any of it. It's time to show the world what...
I went to XINJIANG p3 | INSANE FOOD, Some Uyghurs look Hungarian!! numuves • 177K views Join me as I venture into an INSANE, yet mouth-watering food world of the Uyghurs and Xinjiangers. Goat heads, goat intestines. You name it, they goat it! You can watch Part 1 here: https://youtu....
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Looking into the "Myth (or not) of Chinese Debt Traps in Africa"...
Remember this? : China 'counters US dollar hegemony' with gold reserves, yuan currency swap deals Geopolitical Economy Report • 56K views China is advancing the global movement toward de-dollarization. Beijing's central bank is boosting its gold reserves while signing currency swap deals in yuan with countries like Argentina,...
Web search: "China Helping Africa"
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n recent years, China’s economic presence in Africa has led to a heated debate, some of it well-informed and some of it not, about the nature of Chinese involvement and its implications for the continent. The debate is partially motivated by the rapid growth of China’s economic presence in Africa: for example, Chinese investment in Africa grew from USD 210 million in 2000 to 3.17 billion in 2011.[1] Aid is an important policy instrument for China among its various engagements with Africa, and indeed Africa has been a top recipient of Chinese aid: by the end of 2009 it had received 45.7 percent of the RMB 256.29 billion cumulative foreign aid of China.[2] This aid to Africa has raised many questions, such as its composition, its goal and nature.
What constitutes China’s aid?
Officially, China provides eight types of foreign aid: complete projects, goods and materials, technical cooperation, human resource development cooperation, medical assistance, emergency humanitarian aid, volunteer programs, and debt relief. [3] China’s aid to Africa covers a wide array of fields, such as agriculture, education, transportation, energy, communications, and health. According to Chinese scholars, since 1956, China has provided almost 900 aid projects to African countries, including assistance supporting textile factories, hydropower stations, stadiums, hospitals, and schools.
Official development assistance is defined by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) as concessional funding given to developing countries and to multilateral institutions primarily for the purpose of promoting welfare and economic development in the recipient country. [4] China is not a member of OECD and does not follow its definition or practice on development aid. The bulk of Chinese financing in Africa falls under the category of development finance, but not aid. This fact is privately acknowledged by Chinese government analysts, although Chinese literature constantly blurs the distinction between the two categories.
The billions of dollars that China commits to Africa are repayable, long-term loans. From 2009 to 2012, China provided USD 10 billion in financing to Africa in the form of “concessional loans.”[5] During Chinese President Xi Jinping’s first overseas trip to Africa in March 2013, he doubled this commitment to USD 20 billion from 2013 to 2015.[6] The head sovereign risk analyst of Export-Import Bank of China announced in November 2013 that by 2025, China will have provided Africa with USD 1 trillion in financing, including direct investment, soft loans and commercial loans. [7]
China’s own policy actively contributes to the confusion between development finance and aid. The Chinese government encourages its agencies and commercial entities to “closely mix and combine foreign aid, direct investment, service contracts, labor cooperation, foreign trade and export.”[8] The goal is to maximize feasibility and flexibility of Chinese projects to meet local realities in the recipient country, but it also makes it difficult to capture which portion of the financing is – or should be – categorized as aid. One rather convincing theory is that the Chinese government in effect pays for the difference between the interest rates of concessional loans provided to Africa and comparable commercial loans. Therefore, only the small difference in interest rates could qualify as Chinese aid.
Who does China’s aid serve?
Despite Chinese leaders’ claim that China’s assistance to Africa is totally selfless and altruistic, the reality is far more complex.[9] China’s policy toward Africa is pragmatic, and aid has been a useful policy instrument since the early days of People’s Republic of China.
During the Cold War, foreign aid an important political tool that China used to gain Africa’s diplomatic recognition and to compete with the United States and the Soviet Union for Africa’s support. Between 1963 and 1964, Zhou Enlai visited 10 African countries and announced the well-known “Eight Principles of Foreign Economic and Technological Assistance.”[10] These aid principles were designed to compete simultaneously with the “imperialists” (the United States) and the “revisionists” (the Soviet Union) for Africa’s approval and support.
These efforts were enhanced during the Cultural Revolution under the influence of a radical revolutionary ideology, motivating China to provide large amounts of foreign aid to Africa despite its own domestic economic difficulties. [11] One famous example was the Tanzania-Zambia Railway built between 1970 and 1975, for which China provided a zero-interest loan of RMB 980 million. By the mid-1980s, China’s generous assistance had opened the door to diplomatic recognition with 44 African countries. [12]
Since the beginning of China’s reform and opening up, especially after 2000, Africa has become an increasingly important economic partner for China. Africa enjoys rich natural resources and market potential, and urgently needs infrastructure and development finance to stimulate economic growth. Chinese development finance, combined with the aid, aims at not only benefiting the local recipient countries, but also China itself. For example, China’s “tied aid” for infrastructure usually favors Chinese companies (especially state-owned enterprises), while its loans are in many cases backed by African natural resources.
Much Chinese financing to Africa is associated with securing the continent’s natural resources. Using what is sometimes characterized as the “Angola Model,” Chinas frequently provides low-interest loans to nations who rely on commodities, such as oil or mineral resources, as collateral.[13] In these cases, the recipient nations usually suffer from low credit ratings and have great difficulty obtaining funding from the international financial market; China makes financing relatively available—with certain conditions.
Though commodity-backed loans were not created by China – leading Western banks were making such loans to African countries, including Angola and Ghana, before China Eximbank and Angola completed their first oil-backed loan in March 2004 – but the Chinese built the model to scale and applied it using a systematic approach. In Angola in 2006, USD 4 billion in such loans probably helped Chinese oil companies win the exploitation rights to multiple oil blocks.[14] In 2010, Sinopec’s acquisition of a 50 percent stake in Block 18 coincided with the disbursement of the first tranche of Eximbank funding, and in 2005, Sinopec’s acquisition of rights to Block 3/80 coincided with the announcement of a new USD 2 billion loan from China Eximbank to the Angolan government.[15] In 2008, the China Railway Group used the same model to secure the mining rights to the Democratic Republic of Congo’s copper and cobalt mines under the slogan “(Infrastructure) projects for resources.”[16] According to Debra Brautigam, a top expert on China-Africa relations, between 2004 and 2011, China reached similar unprecedented deals with at least seven resource-rich African countries, with a total volume of nearly USD 14 billion.[17]
In addition to securing Africa’s natural resources, China’s capital flows into Africa also create business opportunities for Chinese service contractors, such as construction companies. According to Chinese analysts, Africa is China’s second-largest supplier of service contracts, and “when we provide Africa assistance of RMB 1 billion, we will get service contracts worth USD 1 billion (RMB 6 billion) from Africa.”[18] In exchange for most Chinese financial aid to Africa, Beijing requires that infrastructure construction and other contracts favor Chinese service providers: 70 percent of them go to “approved,” mostly state-owned, Chinese companies, and the rest are open to local firms, many of which are also joint ventures with Chinese groups.[19] In this sense, China’s financing to Africa, including aid, creates business for Chinese companies and employment opportunities for Chinese laborers, a critical goal of Beijing’s Going Out strategy.
How to understand Chinese aid to Africa?
With a few exceptions, there is a strong tendency among observers to assert moral judgments in the assessment of Chinese aid and development finance to Africa: China’s activities are either “evil” because they represent China’s selfish quest for natural resources and damage Africa’s fragile efforts to improve governance and build a sustainable future; or they are “virtuous” because they contribute to a foundation for long-term economic development, through infrastructure projects and revenue creation.
This polarization reveals the two sides of the same coin. On the positive side, China’s aid and development financing fills a void left by the West and promotes the development of African countries. Many Chinese projects require large investment and long pay-back terms that traditional donors are reluctant to provide. On the other hand, however, these short-term benefits should not form a cover-up for the potential long-term negative consequences associated with neglecting issues of governance, fairness and sustainability. For example, when the “tied aid” is linked to the profitability of Chinese companies, it becomes questionable whether China would prioritize Africa’s interests or its own.
There is also an ongoing debate inside China about the goal and management of Chinese aid to Africa. For the foreign policy bureaucrats at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, foreign aid is essentially a political instrument for China to strengthen bilateral ties and facilitate the development of African countries. In their view, political considerations should be the most important criteria in aid decision-making. Economic benefits associated with aid projects, such as profitability, resource extraction, or the acquisition service contracts for Chinese vendors, should only be secondary.
However, trade promoters such as the Ministry of Commerce have rather opposite perspective. In their view, foreign aid serves China’s overall national priority, which by definition is economic growth. Therefore, all aspects of aid decisions should reflect broad economic considerations. Under this logic, the inclination is to allocate the aid budget to countries that offer China the greatest number of commercial opportunities and benefits. Since China’s top economic interest is Africa’s natural resources, aid decisions are inevitably skewed toward resource-rich countries while others receive less favorable consideration.[20]
This practice is problematic in that many of the resource-rich African countries with which China works also suffer from serious political problems, such as authoritarianism, poor governance, and corruption. When the Ministry of Commerce pursues economic gains and associates aid projects with resource extraction, it uses aid packages to promote business relations. This directly contributes to the negative perception that China is pouring aid, funding, and infrastructure projects to prop up corrupt governments in exchange for natural resources. As many Chinese analysts observe, the Foreign Ministry in recent years has been fighting fiercely for the authority to manage China’s foreign aid projects, which are currently under the purview of the Ministry of Commerce.
The intention of China’s aid to Africa is benign but not altruistic. China does not seek to use aid to influence the domestic politics of African countries or dictate policies. Instead, it truly hopes to help Africa achieve better development while avoiding meddling with the internal affairs of African countries through conditional aid. But on the other hand, China is not helping Africa in exchange for nothing. Chinese projects create access to Africa’s natural resources and local markets, business opportunities for Chinese companies and employment for Chinese labors. When Chinese officials emphasize that China also provides aid to countries that are not rich in natural resources to defuse international criticisms, they often forget to mention that China may have its eyes on other things which these countries can deliver, such as their support of Beijing’s “one China” policy, of China’s agenda at multilateral forums, and of China as a “responsible stakeholder.” In this sense, China’s comprehensive, multi-dimensional agenda of its aid to Africa defies any simplistic categorization.
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-------- This is nice:
Nov 26, 2021 — From 2000 to 2020, China helped African countries build more than 13,000 km of roads and railway and more than 80 large-scale power facilities, ...
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China makes billion-dose pledge to Africa to help ...
South China Morning Post·https://www.scmp.com › ch...
Nov 29, 2021 — China has promised to donate a billion coronavirus vaccines, advance billions of dollars for African trade and infrastructure, and write off ...
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This seems good - legit:
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In mid-August, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs surprised the world with a series of announcements. Wang Yi, Beijing’s most senior diplomat, promised extensive debt relief for some of the world’s poorest countries. The announcement was made at the ministerial meeting of the Forum for China Africa Cooperation.
In addition to increasing food assistance to the continent, Wang committed to no longer demanding repayment of concessional loans that in the recent past had reached maturity, but which 17 African states had failed to pay off.
Outstanding balances on loans mostly extended by China’s Ministry of Commerce (or, less frequently, The Export-Import Bank of China) are thus slated to be cancelled.
Details about beneficiaries and credit lines are still to be released. But from an African standpoint this was welcome – if somewhat expected – news.
Wang’s proclamation was timely in light of the growing sense of a looming debt crisis that threatens many developing countries. This includes a number on the African continent. Combined private and public external debt of African states more than quintupled between 2000 and 2020. Chinese public and private lenders accounted for 12% of the continent’s US$696 billion external debts in 2020.
The continent’s average debt-to-GDP ratios exceeded 50% prior to the pandemic. The most recent Africa Economic Outlook from the African Development Bank expects Africa’s debt-to-GDP ratio to be 70% this year. As of February 2022, 23 African countries were either in debt distress or at risk of it.
The recent economic meltdown and toppling of the Rajapaksa family regime in Sri Lanka rattled countries from Ghana to South Africa. The events stoked fears that panicked markets might question the solvency of African sovereigns next.
Ghana and South Africa are particularly worried about a vicious cycle of downgrades by the rating agencies, and rising trade imbalances. Other fears include worsening pressures on domestic currencies and chances of bondholders seeking to exit African markets. These would accelerate financial instability.
Africa will take whatever relief it can get under such circumstances.
The last time China forgave debt in Africa, at the end of 2020, it wrote off US$113 million for various countries. This points to the need not to overstate the debt forgiveness.
Geopolitics
Beijing’s announcement was largely already priced into the strategy of many African central banks. Chinese interest-free loans are frequently cancelled. And it’s widely understood that when China extends such credit lines, they are rarely ever fully paid back.
Beijing certainly was not counting on the likes of Burundi, Congo or Mozambique to service these debts. And it has regularly rescheduled loans to African sovereigns worth billions in the last 20 years.
In addition, the impact of China’s latest move on Africa’s overall debt profile is likely to be limited. Beijing’s gesture will not reduce the increase in sovereign yields (interest on bonds). It will also not ease the downward pressure on exchange rates that so many African states have been experiencing in the last year.
This does not mean, however, that Wang Yi’s vows were not newsworthy. For some individual countries, this round of Chinese cancellations might have an impact. Most of Africa’s debts to China are owed by five states – Angola, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria and Zambia. Any scrapping of outstanding balances could usefully help rebalance their liabilities away from an overdependence on Beijing.
For Africa’s very poorest countries – say, Madagascar or Niger – cancellations of even US$50 million would make a meaningful difference to their ability to pay for basic services.
But on the whole, the political significance of the latest developments is likely to be greater than their financial impact.
This is poignantly illustrated by the fact that Beijing’s debt relief proposals were accompanied by much fanfare, contrary to previous cancellations. This reflects the pressure China feels it is under in the international debt debate.
The Trump administration accused China of ensnarling developing countries by extending credit to debtors Beijing knows lack the solvency to pay it back. As (former) US vice-president Mike Pence put it in 2018
China uses so-called ‘debt diplomacy’ to expand its influence … offering hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure loans to governments from Asia to Africa to Europe and even Latin America.
Such “debt traps” are deliberately being created so China can force poor African states to vote with it in the UN General Assembly, support its positions on Taiwan or acquire valuable real estate in Africa that can be converted into military bases. Or so the narrative goes.
The Biden administration has been less direct in its allegations of Chinese debt trap diplomacy. But it too has put Beijing on the defensive by accusing it of holding African states over a barrel through its creditor power.
In addition, flagship initiatives of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have been strongly shaped by allegations about China’s encouragement of parallel public finance accounting and its reluctance to accept Paris Club conventions for facilitating debt restructurings.
Despite the fact that African liabilities to private creditors – especially bondholders – have grown much more rapidly in the last decade than debts owed to Beijing, the international perception is one of singular Chinese intransigence in helping to resolve Africa’s resurgent indebtedness.
Beijing tries to push back
China’s public relations problem thus has real world consequences and leaves it in a quandary. Although Foreign Minister Wang condemned a “zero-sum Cold War mentality” in his comments accompanying the promised debt relief for 17 African countries, his rebuttal too was clearly intended to score some geopolitical gains.
His desire to manoeuvre China out of the defensive position it finds itself in has also been evident in Beijing’s recent concessions to help recurrent defaulter Zambia restructure its liabilities. Chinese concessions played a key role in reaching a debt agreement for Zambia that potentially sets a precedent for how Beijing could work with other lenders on similar assistance for other countries. The Zambian deal was done under the G20 Common Framework for Debt Treatments, which also requires an International Monetary Fund programme to receive effective relief.
This mix of concessions and pushback is contextualised by the fact that the sense of inevitable Chinese ascendancy that in the last decades accompanied Beijing’s overtures on the continent has somewhat faded in recent years. The scaling down of the ambitions of Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative (including much reduced credit lines for African states as Beijing prioritises domestic objectives) has perplexed many on the continent. So did the earlier decision to only allocate to Africa US$10 billion in special drawing rights through the International Monetary Fund, while China has little obvious use for its quota of US$38 billion.
Ignoring African priorities
Wang Yi’s announced cancellation of loan balances that were unlikely to be serviced in full anyway therefore appears at this moment to be a low-cost political move for China to reaffirm its deep ties with African sovereigns and emphasise mutual goodwill. In the short term, that might be the case.
But fundamentally, Beijing’s decision does little to alter Africa’s growing indebtedness. Amid geopolitical posturing by China and the US, there is still little sign that global powers or the international financial institutions will finally tackle the systemic drivers of the resurgence in African debt. In that sense, China’s recent announcement is, unfortunately, business as usual.
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So, China provides funds and helps countries, including, most recently Cuba, in emergency situations and occasionally even writes off debt obligations and (even) according to mainstream Western news sources (is all well known and established facts) "China does not seek to use aid to influence the domestic politics of African countries or dictate policies."
- Meanwhile, a few months back - I remember watching some mainstream morning news talk show that had traveled to Ghana and they were all having a good time and trying to spread this news that Ghana is in some good position and its people are doing well and all this junk - just absolute - lies.
Bismillah...earlier:
Have work to do...
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