Comments by "Persona" (@ArawnOfAnnwn) on "Is CHINA using DEBT to CONTROL Africa? - VisualPolitik EN" video.

@morganoox3838 IMF loans are still loans. No, they don't ask for resources as collateral. They dictate internal economic policy instead. China does business. The IMF does paternalism.
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Also people should watch Gyude Moore China in Africa An African Perspective to get some perspective on Chinese participation in Africa - from an actual African decision maker rather than a western commentator. Chinese loans are better described as commercial loans, which is why African countries take them. Which is to say, they're more similar to standard business loans than the kinds of highly conditional and interventionist loans western govts or the IMF (look up the 'Structural Adjustment Programs' about that) insist on. In other words, China ironically respects African govt. sovereignty better than the highly paternalistic West does i.e. they don't dictate national economic policy to recipient nations (for a metaphor closer to home, think of the austerity packages that the EU insisted Greece and other distressed economies implement following the 2008 economic crisis fallout - China mostly doesn't do that).
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@nesseihtgnay9419 'The How China Lends: A Rare Look into 100 Debt Contracts with Foreign Governments study found scant evidence of debt traps.' ... 'Like How China Lends, the Rhodium Group, an economic research firm, didn’t find any clear-cut asset seizures in a review of 130 bilateral debt renegotiations involving China between 2000 and 2020. The firm’s previous research found bilateral debt renegotiations with China “usually involve a more balanced outcome between lender and borrower, ranging from extensions of loan terms and repayment deadlines to explicit refinancing, or partial or even total debt forgiveness”' ... 'Few examine how projects are designed, financed, or awarded before making an allegation. This is why projects involving China in any way are often mentioned as part of debt trap speculation. The debt trap theory – one scholar called it a meme – has become a catch-all.' That meme was invented by Brahma Chelaney, an Indian who's made an entire career out of it.
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'The How China Lends: A Rare Look into 100 Debt Contracts with Foreign Governments study found scant evidence of debt traps.' ... 'Like How China Lends, the Rhodium Group, an economic research firm, didn’t find any clear-cut asset seizures in a review of 130 bilateral debt renegotiations involving China between 2000 and 2020. The firm’s previous research found bilateral debt renegotiations with China “usually involve a more balanced outcome between lender and borrower, ranging from extensions of loan terms and repayment deadlines to explicit refinancing, or partial or even total debt forgiveness”' ... 'Few examine how projects are designed, financed, or awarded before making an allegation. This is why projects involving China in any way are often mentioned as part of debt trap speculation. The debt trap theory – one scholar called it a meme – has become a catch-all.' That meme was invented by Brahma Chelaney, an Indian who's made an entire career out of it.
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Christopher Meisner The 'terms of the agreements' are precisely one of the reasons Africans turn to China in the first place. Western loans undermine African sovereignty by dictating internal economic and even political policy to them (the Structural Adjustment Programs being a case in point). Chinese loans don't. They're commercial loans lent for projects. And then there's your silly comparison with aid. Why would you compare loans to aid, and then further mess that up by also mentioning the IMF there? You think Africans will turn down free money lol? Aid isn't free money, it's American money for American projects. Also, it's a pittance. You know who the biggest recipient of American aid is? Israel. Indeed half that 'aid' is even more suspect than Chinese infrastructure loans, as it is openly categorized as either military or political aid. And all of it tends to follow a pattern of shooting up depending on which country is currently occupying the temporary seats on the UN Security Council. So much for China being special for trying to buy influence. And this is just the tip of the iceberg - there's literally an entire section dedication to the many criticisms of US aid even on Wikipedia lol. Now go ahead and call me 'wumao' next. It seems to be all you can come up with, besides baseless assumptions.
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@jarjarbinks3193 "USAID or even IMF or Worldbank for that matter also do NOT force the recipient country to sign away its resources and properties in return" - right, they instead dictate to a 'sovereign' country what its internal economic and even political policy should be. Typical western paternalism. And you wonder why Africans aren't too fond of that lol. And you don't know a thing about Sri Lanka, which ironically is more a case study of being done in by the west than anything else - "Steep payments on international sovereign bonds, which comprised nearly 40% of the country’s external debt, put Sirisena’s Government in dire fiscal straits almost immediately. When Sirisena took office, Sri Lanka owed more to Japan, the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank than to China. Of the $ 4.5 billion in debt service Sri Lanka would pay in 2017, only 5% was because of Hambantota. The Central Bank governors under both Rajapaksa and Sirisena do not agree on much, but they both told us that Hambantota, and Chinese finance in general, was not the source of the country’s financial distress." "All these loans were obtained from China EXIM Bank, most at commercial rates. However, each loan had a grace period of around five years and a payback period of 15-plus years. For this very reason, the loan repayments for Hambantota do not amount to a large portion of Sri Lanka’s external debt servicing payments; some loan repayments have not even started yet. Debt repayments for the loans obtained for Hambantota port amount to only around 5 percent of Sri Lanka’s total annual foreign debt payments, and even less among total debt repayments." "By the end of 2017, only little over 10 percent of Sri Lanka’s foreign debt was owed to China and most of that was in the form of concessionary loans. Instead, the largest portion of Sri Lanka’s foreign debt was international sovereign bonds, which amounted to 39 percent of the total foreign debt as of 2017. These are commercial borrowings obtained from international capital markets since 2007, and such bonds have resulted in soaring external debt servicing due to the nature of the debt. Unlike in concessionary loans obtained to carry out a specific development project, these commercial borrowings do not have a long payback period or the option of payment in small installments." You can look up these details yourself in the more serious journals like The Diplomat or South Asia Journal. It's no secret, it's just that no one cares for boring details when there's a clickbait headline to be had.
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Also people should watch Gyude Moore China in Africa An African Perspective to get some perspective on Chinese participation in Africa - from an actual African decision maker rather than a western commentator. Chinese loans are better described as commercial loans, which is why African countries take them. Which is to say, they're more similar to standard business loans than the kinds of highly conditional and interventionist loans western govts or the IMF (look up the 'Structural Adjustment Programs' about that) insist on. In other words, China ironically respects African govt. sovereignty better than the highly paternalistic West does i.e. they don't dictate national economic policy to recipient nations (for a metaphor closer to home, think of the austerity packages that the EU insisted Greece and other distressed economies implement following the 2008 economic crisis fallout - China mostly doesn't do that).
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France literally controls a quarter of Africa's monetary system. Look up the CFA Franc. Yep...
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Christopher Meisner 'The How China Lends: A Rare Look into 100 Debt Contracts with Foreign Governments study found scant evidence of debt traps.' ... 'Like How China Lends, the Rhodium Group, an economic research firm, didn’t find any clear-cut asset seizures in a review of 130 bilateral debt renegotiations involving China between 2000 and 2020. The firm’s previous research found bilateral debt renegotiations with China “usually involve a more balanced outcome between lender and borrower, ranging from extensions of loan terms and repayment deadlines to explicit refinancing, or partial or even total debt forgiveness”' ... 'Few examine how projects are designed, financed, or awarded before making an allegation. This is why projects involving China in any way are often mentioned as part of debt trap speculation. The debt trap theory – one scholar called it a meme – has become a catch-all.' That meme was invented by Brahma Chelaney, an Indian who's made an entire career out of it.
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Also people should watch Gyude Moore China in Africa An African Perspective to get some perspective on Chinese participation in Africa - from an actual African decision maker rather than a western commentator. Chinese loans are better described as commercial loans, which is why African countries take them. Which is to say, they're more similar to standard business loans than the kinds of highly conditional and interventionist loans western govts or the IMF (look up the 'Structural Adjustment Programs' about that) insist on. In other words, China ironically respects African govt. sovereignty better than the highly paternalistic West does i.e. they don't dictate national economic policy to recipient nations (for a metaphor closer to home, think of the austerity packages that the EU insisted Greece and other distressed economies implement following the 2008 economic crisis fallout - China mostly doesn't do that).
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@jarjarbinks3193 "The corrupt leadership of those countries gets to..." - I wonder what you'd think of French ties to said corrupt leaderships, which are far deeper than China's. Hell, France practically prints a quarter of Africa's money (look up the CFA Franc), which is far greater control than anything else. Meanwhile China, for all the western antagonism, only makes up about a quarter of Africa's debt (much like you completely overestimated Sri Lanka's external debt). Btw, your description of how Chinese loans just shift money to Chinese firms is ironic, because exactly the same kind of critique has been levelled at western money in Africa for decades. It's one of the main elements of the argument that the west has gotten more out of Africa than it has put in - yes, I mean in the post-colonial era. But I'll leave you to google that on your own. "So much for the Chinese benevolence" - I didn't say China was being benevolent, indeed no one does, not even Africans. Even that Gyude Moore video I mentioned doesn't say that. China is just doing business. Apparently that's bad somehow, probably because it diminishes western hegemony. What you seem to prefer is paternalism, to look down on everyone else. Cos that's what the west did, and still does. That's the worst thing about your take - how much you look down on Africans. It's this very attitude of supercilious arrogance - this implicit belief that African nations are helpless and uncivilized barbarians that need 'guidance' or else they'll squander every opportunity or be taken advantage of - that typified the kinds of loans the IMF gives Africa, which they hated because of how paternalistic they are. Your take assumes the worst about not just China, but also Africa, and implicitly sees the west as better - which flies in the face of history. You don't seem to have a problem with sovereign nations having their internal policies dictated to them by the west. There's nothing that can be said to someone who's so full of himself (or rather, of his people). China will continue to gain from western pride, and you'll have no one but yourselves to blame for it (not that that'll stop you from trying to blame others). As long as the west insists on putting itself on a pedestal, it'll never be able to adjust.
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'The How China Lends: A Rare Look into 100 Debt Contracts with Foreign Governments study found scant evidence of debt traps.' ... 'Like How China Lends, the Rhodium Group, an economic research firm, didn’t find any clear-cut asset seizures in a review of 130 bilateral debt renegotiations involving China between 2000 and 2020. The firm’s previous research found bilateral debt renegotiations with China “usually involve a more balanced outcome between lender and borrower, ranging from extensions of loan terms and repayment deadlines to explicit refinancing, or partial or even total debt forgiveness”' ... 'Few examine how projects are designed, financed, or awarded before making an allegation. This is why projects involving China in any way are often mentioned as part of debt trap speculation. The debt trap theory – one scholar called it a meme – has become a catch-all.' That meme was invented by Brahma Chelaney, an Indian who's made an entire career out of it.
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Also people should watch Gyude Moore China in Africa An African Perspective to get some perspective on Chinese participation in Africa - from an actual African decision maker rather than a western commentator. Chinese loans are better described as commercial loans, which is why African countries take them. Which is to say, they're more similar to standard business loans than the kinds of highly conditional and interventionist loans western govts or the IMF (look up the 'Structural Adjustment Programs' about that) insist on. In other words, China ironically respects African govt. sovereignty better than the highly paternalistic West does i.e. they don't dictate national economic policy to recipient nations (for a metaphor closer to home, think of the austerity packages that the EU insisted Greece and other distressed economies implement following the 2008 economic crisis fallout - China mostly doesn't do that).
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@minki46664 Yes? What of it? What do you think you know about Hambantota? Or did you just read the headline? Here's some details, enjoy - "Steep payments on international sovereign bonds, which comprised nearly 40% of the country’s external debt, put Sirisena’s Government in dire fiscal straits almost immediately. When Sirisena took office, Sri Lanka owed more to Japan, the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank than to China. Of the $ 4.5 billion in debt service Sri Lanka would pay in 2017, only 5% was because of Hambantota. The Central Bank governors under both Rajapaksa and Sirisena do not agree on much, but they both told us that Hambantota, and Chinese finance in general, was not the source of the country’s financial distress." "All these loans were obtained from China EXIM Bank, most at commercial rates. However, each loan had a grace period of around five years and a payback period of 15-plus years. For this very reason, the loan repayments for Hambantota do not amount to a large portion of Sri Lanka’s external debt servicing payments; some loan repayments have not even started yet. Debt repayments for the loans obtained for Hambantota port amount to only around 5 percent of Sri Lanka’s total annual foreign debt payments, and even less among total debt repayments." "By the end of 2017, only little over 10 percent of Sri Lanka’s foreign debt was owed to China and most of that was in the form of concessionary loans. Instead, the largest portion of Sri Lanka’s foreign debt was international sovereign bonds, which amounted to 39 percent of the total foreign debt as of 2017. These are commercial borrowings obtained from international capital markets since 2007, and such bonds have resulted in soaring external debt servicing due to the nature of the debt. Unlike in concessionary loans obtained to carry out a specific development project, these commercial borrowings do not have a long payback period or the option of payment in small installments." You can look up these details yourself in the more serious journals like The Diplomat or South Asia Journal. It's no secret, it's just that no one cares for boring details when there's a clickbait headline to be had.
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@minki46664 Lol, I notice how you've edited your reply down. Guess you weren't able to think of anything else to stick, so you just kept with the same refrain. If you bothered to read what I quoted, you'd know that if you want to blame someone for that port, it ought to be Japan, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the international sovereign bond market i.e. Sri Lanka's actual majority creditors. But no, let's just focus on China getting a lease cos that caters to my biases. I don't expect you to concede - it's embarrassing to admit to one's idiocy after all - so have fun chasing headlines everywhere and being played like a fiddle by the media for it. And I don't mean just being played against China btw - simplistic attitudes like yours are ripe for profiteers to manipulate in everything. Marketers especially love fools like you. It's easier to sell to people who don't question.
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@jarjarbinks3193 'The How China Lends: A Rare Look into 100 Debt Contracts with Foreign Governments study found scant evidence of debt traps.' ... 'Like How China Lends, the Rhodium Group, an economic research firm, didn’t find any clear-cut asset seizures in a review of 130 bilateral debt renegotiations involving China between 2000 and 2020. The firm’s previous research found bilateral debt renegotiations with China “usually involve a more balanced outcome between lender and borrower, ranging from extensions of loan terms and repayment deadlines to explicit refinancing, or partial or even total debt forgiveness”' ... 'Few examine how projects are designed, financed, or awarded before making an allegation. This is why projects involving China in any way are often mentioned as part of debt trap speculation. The debt trap theory – one scholar called it a meme – has become a catch-all.' That meme was invented by Brahma Chelaney, an Indian who's made an entire career out of it.
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Also people should watch Gyude Moore China in Africa An African Perspective to get some perspective on Chinese participation in Africa - from an actual African decision maker rather than a western commentator. Chinese loans are better described as commercial loans, which is why African countries take them. Which is to say, they're more similar to standard business loans than the kinds of highly conditional and interventionist loans western govts or the IMF (look up the 'Structural Adjustment Programs' about that) insist on. In other words, China ironically respects African govt. sovereignty better than the highly paternalistic West does i.e. they don't dictate national economic policy to recipient nations (for a metaphor closer to home, think of the austerity packages that the EU insisted Greece and other distressed economies implement following the 2008 economic crisis fallout - China mostly doesn't do that).
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@jarjarbinks3193 "All thanks in no small part to the Chinese "sponsored" infrastructure projects and the resulting debt burden" - you apparently lack reading comprehension, since the data I gave shows how little that debt is relative to their debts to others. "You are free to show me an incident where IMF or Worldbank got properly in return" - yep, definitely lack reading comprehension. Since there's plenty of examples of another form of suzerainty - overlordship. There's plenty of examples of the IMF dictating terms to recipient countries of how they should conduct themselves. Those Structural Adjustment Programs I mentioned are infamous for them. The you prefer western superciliousness and paternalism to Chinese business says more about you than anything else. Ironically, I suspect you're also the kind of conservative who defends private businesses doing what China does. That said, the biggest mark against you is that you literally can't seem to read.
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@jarjarbinks3193 "As the lender of last resort, IMF has every right to..." - uh huh, and as pretty much any lender anywhere, China has a right to recover its money. They're literally doing what any business does. And as the studies I shared show, they're not even doing that much, usually renegotiating rather than seizing. Your loan shark analogy makes no sense, unless you consider ANY loan to be loan sharking, since loan sharks have high rates of interest while China's loans are popular cos they have low rates. Which they're even willing to renegotiate. "It is like the doctor/hospital doing a liver transplant INSISTING on the patient to NOT consumer alcohol" - ironically, your own example contradicts you, since doctors aren't allowed to do that. All they can do is ask, they can't force. IMF loans have strict conditions, they're not mere asking. They implicitly undermine national sovereignty. It's funny how you seem to have a problem with China (possibly) taking control of a few national assets, but are perfectly fine with the IMF controlling the whole nation.
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@jarjarbinks3193 Btw, your belief that the IMF is doing what's best for the nations it 'guides' is cute. One of the criticisms of the Structural Adjustment Programs is the very economic ideology that underpins them. Simply put, economists have pointed out that financial austerity is NOT often a great policy, and often does more harm than good. Indeed the only group who always DOES benefit from austerity measures is creditors. Which means that where China might get its money from some assets, the IMF just does so by forcing the country to hurt itself in order to pay back its creditors. Big difference lol. In fact one could argue that the former is better, since only a small part of the country is affected, whereas the IMF policies affect the whole damn nation.
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@charlesfavell3350 OK Troll
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@AJ-happydad 'The How China Lends: A Rare Look into 100 Debt Contracts with Foreign Governments study found scant evidence of debt traps.' ... 'Like How China Lends, the Rhodium Group, an economic research firm, didn’t find any clear-cut asset seizures in a review of 130 bilateral debt renegotiations involving China between 2000 and 2020. The firm’s previous research found bilateral debt renegotiations with China “usually involve a more balanced outcome between lender and borrower, ranging from extensions of loan terms and repayment deadlines to explicit refinancing, or partial or even total debt forgiveness”' ... 'Few examine how projects are designed, financed, or awarded before making an allegation. This is why projects involving China in any way are often mentioned as part of debt trap speculation. The debt trap theory – one scholar called it a meme – has become a catch-all.' That meme was invented by Brahma Chelaney, an Indian who's made an entire career out of it.
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@lightboi9752 Good timing bringing that up just now. See my above comment for the details regarding Sri Lanka. Not as convenient as a clickbait headline, but reality isn't contained in a headline.
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@minki46664 You're not trying to be concise, you're trying to be lazy. Cute attempt at trying to hide that tho. In the end it's the countries in question that matter, not condescending western commentators who've always thought they know best. Even lazy ones.
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@minki46664 Oh and that "condescending western commentators who've always thought they know best" was not merely a personal jibe. Cos while you raise a fuss over China getting a port, the west gets entire countries for their loans. And no, I don't mean colonialism. One of the reasons Chinese loans are popular is because they're simple business loans. Western loans on the other hand typically dictate terms for internal policies to follow to ostensibly sovereign nations, basically undermining said sovereignty. That's why Africa especially doesn't like western loans. Look up the IMF's infamous Structural Adjustment Programs for some examples. And no, the results were typically not good. China may get its money back from a port, which it has to make profitable btw. The west just does so by forcing the country to starve itself in order to pay back its debts. Or what they euphemistically call 'austerity'.
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@minki46664 "Loosing a port due to debt obligations" TO Japan, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the international sovereign bond market. FTFY!
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'The How China Lends: A Rare Look into 100 Debt Contracts with Foreign Governments study found scant evidence of debt traps.' ... 'Like How China Lends, the Rhodium Group, an economic research firm, didn’t find any clear-cut asset seizures in a review of 130 bilateral debt renegotiations involving China between 2000 and 2020. The firm’s previous research found bilateral debt renegotiations with China “usually involve a more balanced outcome between lender and borrower, ranging from extensions of loan terms and repayment deadlines to explicit refinancing, or partial or even total debt forgiveness”' ... 'Few examine how projects are designed, financed, or awarded before making an allegation. This is why projects involving China in any way are often mentioned as part of debt trap speculation. The debt trap theory – one scholar called it a meme – has become a catch-all.' That meme was invented by Brahma Chelaney, an Indian who's made an entire career out of it.
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Regarding Sri Lanka - "Steep payments on international sovereign bonds, which comprised nearly 40% of the country’s external debt, put Sirisena’s Government in dire fiscal straits almost immediately. When Sirisena took office, Sri Lanka owed more to Japan, the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank than to China. Of the $ 4.5 billion in debt service Sri Lanka would pay in 2017, only 5% was because of Hambantota. The Central Bank governors under both Rajapaksa and Sirisena do not agree on much, but they both told us that Hambantota, and Chinese finance in general, was not the source of the country’s financial distress." "All these loans were obtained from China EXIM Bank, most at commercial rates. However, each loan had a grace period of around five years and a payback period of 15-plus years. For this very reason, the loan repayments for Hambantota do not amount to a large portion of Sri Lanka’s external debt servicing payments; some loan repayments have not even started yet. Debt repayments for the loans obtained for Hambantota port amount to only around 5 percent of Sri Lanka’s total annual foreign debt payments, and even less among total debt repayments." "By the end of 2017, only little over 10 percent of Sri Lanka’s foreign debt was owed to China and most of that was in the form of concessionary loans. Instead, the largest portion of Sri Lanka’s foreign debt was international sovereign bonds, which amounted to 39 percent of the total foreign debt as of 2017. These are commercial borrowings obtained from international capital markets since 2007, and such bonds have resulted in soaring external debt servicing due to the nature of the debt. Unlike in concessionary loans obtained to carry out a specific development project, these commercial borrowings do not have a long payback period or the option of payment in small installments."
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@johnsmith99997 'The How China Lends: A Rare Look into 100 Debt Contracts with Foreign Governments study found scant evidence of debt traps.' ... 'Like How China Lends, the Rhodium Group, an economic research firm, didn’t find any clear-cut asset seizures in a review of 130 bilateral debt renegotiations involving China between 2000 and 2020. The firm’s previous research found bilateral debt renegotiations with China “usually involve a more balanced outcome between lender and borrower, ranging from extensions of loan terms and repayment deadlines to explicit refinancing, or partial or even total debt forgiveness”' ... 'Few examine how projects are designed, financed, or awarded before making an allegation. This is why projects involving China in any way are often mentioned as part of debt trap speculation. The debt trap theory – one scholar called it a meme – has become a catch-all.' That meme was invented by Brahma Chelaney, an Indian who's made an entire career out of it.
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@minki46664 Bruh, you don't HAVE an argument to begin with. Cos you're too lazy to even try to make one. Now I know how internet trolls work, as they focus on exhausting their opponents into giving up aka just what you're doing. As such, we're done. Troll someone else. *inb4 you go all "oh resorting to personal attacks now, are we? That shows I'm right!" Eyeroll. At least don't be that predictable.
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@pomme_paille Youtube didn't used to do this in the old days. They've been doing it more and more off late. It's worth noting that its current CEO has something of an activist bent, as she advocates for a bunch of causes in the US. Maybe related, maybe not.
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