Italy's Meloni says Biden never raised issue of Belt and Road membership
Italy's Meloni says Biden never raised issue of Belt and Road membership
Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who will visit the White House on Thursday, said that U.S. President Joe Biden had never challenged her on the issue of Rome being part of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
ROME, July 23 (Reuters) - Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who will visit the White House on Thursday, said that U.S. President Joe Biden had never challenged her on the issue of Rome being part of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Meloni leads the only major Western country to have joined China's BRI scheme, which envisions rebuilding the old Silk Road to connect China with Asia, Europe and beyond with large infrastructure spending.
Meloni leads the only major Western country to have joined Chinaās BRI scheme, which envisions rebuilding the old Silk Road to connect China with Asia, Europe and beyond with large infrastructure spending.
This sounds amazing to me. China has done some great strides building up their infrastructure, it's truly astonishing.
Why exactly is this criticised?
The Western critique of the BRI is that it's debt trap diplomacy, i.e. China loans money for development and hopes the beneficiaries can't repay so they can "own" them in a diplomatic sense, or downright repo some of their critical assets.
That's the criticism that Trump has levied against the BRI, but there are serious objections to this portrayal. Here's one from a reputable Western source:
https://www.chathamhouse.org/2020/08/debunking-myth-debt-trap-diplomacy
I wonder why then, if itās a debt trap, China has such a better record of forgiving foreign loans than other countries and institutions? The IMF requires economic control for their loans, including such stipulations as the privatization of public infrastructure, dismantling of labor laws, and lowering of minimum wages in their loans on a regular basis. Iāve not heard of any such requirements from Chinese loans, and in fact billions of dollars of loans were forgiven during the Covid-19 crisis. Why is there no criticism of the IMF loan regime and its fundamentally exploitative loans? The whole criticism reeks of orientalist hysteria to me.
Thanks for this link! I read the bullet points ('cuz it's really late right now) but I'm keen on watching the video tomorrow!
It's difficult for me to take anything Trump, and by extension, the U.S. says too seriously. They love to fearmonger about foreign influences and propaganda, but it's not like they don't do the very same they accuse others of.
It's all a way for the CCP to gain power over other countries. "Oh, you're using OUR infrastructure, you need to do X thing that's bad for you or we will turn it off/fuck you over with it".
The CCP cannot be trusted.
Too bad the tankies here refuse to hear a single bad word about the CCP, with some even making this sound like āTrumptard fear-mongeringā.
In reality, the BRI has shaped up to be little more than debt-trap diplomacy, powered by bribes to influential politicians (borderline autocrats) whoāre willing to sell their countries for a dime.
I follow African local politics rather closely and have many friends on the continent, and Iāve yet to see any Africans say that Chinese loans carry such requirements. However, nearly every African country has commented on the exploitative nature of WorldBank and IMF loans, which often come with policy requirements, such as privatization of public infrastructure and restriction on wages.
I did see an airport that was supposedly taken over in Uganda by China, but thereās been no corroborating evidence, despite almost two years having passed since the story was broken, and in fact, the president of Uganda came out and said that at the time the story broke, Uganda hadnāt even left the grace period on their loan, much less defaulted on it.
There's no such thing as a perfect government, and there's certainly things the CCP does that I'm not a fan of. That said, China's overall rising standard of living, and incredible infrastructure that's all popped up in the past couple of decades has me really impressed. Attempting an international infrastructure project like this is super interesting, to me at least.
Yeah. China suddenly owns a bunch of African ports and other infrastructure because they overloaded countries with debt.
The deal was signed in 2019 under the administration of Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, drawing criticism from Washington and Brussels, and Italy is highly unlikely to renew it when it expires early next year.
It has produced little benefit for Italy over the past four years, with exports to China totalling 16.4 billion euros ($18.1 billion) last year from 13 billion euros in 2019.
That sounds amazing to me. China has done jack shit except practice wolf imperialism.