Quote Originally Posted by ReluctantSamurai View Post
That America has played the bully in international politics for decades since the end of WWII, needs no debate. That China's "self interested" loans and "eeeevil investment" has produced positive results, is also true. But......

.....methinks you gloss over just how self-serving China's aid is, and what they do when things don't go their way. I follow a lot of Australian media, and the Aussie's seem to be bearing the brunt of China's ire, at the moment. Example:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-...-2020/13019242



Australian journalists and citizens have been detained under "security issues".

Australian export goods have been restricted on short notice:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-11-...rkets/12864220



And perhaps a pattern for economic bullying:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-...-pain/12243560



No real bombs, as of yet, but China's economic bullying is gaining in strength and frequency. Will that spill over into military action? Keep an eye on Taiwan....
The rulers of China is not a "good" country by almost any metric. They are almost always self serving with the sole aim of actions to be to enable the CCP to continue.

But the world from their point of view is pretty scary: Russia is still a thing and is above them which captured territory after WW2. Allies of the USA are in Japan (who has attacked them), South Korea (who they fought against), Taiwan (a rebel province) and currently have bases in Afghanistan. Another border is India who also is also a threat (a few wars and skirmishes) and the reminder is small countries which the USA has invaded in the (to them) recent past. The rulers are in power since the populace has rising standards of living and currently are content with the deal. For this the economy needs to continually grow at rates that are otherwise unheard of... and at the moment their biggest clients are their biggest rivals. They also need raw materials from countries mainly more friendly to the USA, all of which is transported via the sea which the USA basically controls. And most of China's money is in a currency of the USA. A large province of theirs is full of people who follow a religion which historically is intolerant of other faiths and coincidentally borders countries chock full of both weapons and trained religious fighters.

The loans to Africa are difficult to solve. After throwing off the yoke of white oppression and oversight, most countries have chosen the yoke of a local which given they are also black and local is fine; some cases they're better than what the Europeans did (the King of Belgium sets a low bar here) in others worse. Even though for many years there is a prize of $1 million dollars for peacefully leaving office democratically it has yet to be collected - what is that money when you've got a country to ravage and diplomatic immunity? And the Chinese often offer money now for resources that the Chinese will remove. And added bonus as no need to educate or help the locals and of course a lot of the cash can be syphoned off. What can the West do? 50 years ago when for better or for worse we were the only game in town the IMF can give money with caveats. But no longer is this the only option. So that leaves boycott / embargo or invade - none of which are either palatable or particularly effective. China and Russia both don't like setting precedents of interfering with other sovereign states so the UN can't do anything.

The only thing that could have been done by the West is not purchasing trillions of dollars of goods from China to give them both the money to spend as well as the desire to diversify from massive dollar holdings.