Comments by "peabase" (@peabase) on "G7 confronts authoritarian threats from China and Russia | DW News" video.

  1. If not having occupied foreign lands were a prerequisite for G7 membership, China wouldn't make the grade either. China occupied Tibet in 1900s and continues to do so until this very day.
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  2. It's a grand idea to save Africa from China's evil clutches. Africans have seen presidents-for-life rule them with an iron fist for decades. Now that they've made some democratic progress, Xi Jinping -- China's iron-fisted president-for-life -- comes to undo it.
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  3. Except the recipients aren't held hostage by China.
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  4.  @rwmroy  "Primary pillager", was that a Freudian slip? If you're Chinese, your social credit score just suffered a body blow.
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  5.  @hlyeo98  You've beat them to it, with the Uyghurs slaving away on your cotton fields in Xinjiang.
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  6.  @freepalestine4344  There are loans and loans. Chinese ones land you in debtors' prison.
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  7. That's BRI. We have ample proof of that by now.
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  8.  @leungpaul9401  Don't flatter yourselves. I've seen the infrastructure in China with my very own eyes. If you head for the countryside, the infrastructure becomes incredibly crude very fast. The longest highway -- sorry, we couldn't possibly compete with you there. As a nipper, my pop-pop told me that we bought our roads second-hand from America, and since they were far too long for our needs, we had to make them very crooked in order to make them fit. It would be an absolutely nightmare with your highways. You may be a large green energy producer, maybe even the largest, but only in absolute terms. For fairness' sake, you should also mention that you're the largest polluter in the world. You can't cherry-pick.
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  9. Unlike the G7's 1 billion vaccine donation, Russia exports its vaccine for monetary gain. A vaccine that Russians themselves increasingly refuse to take, because they mistrust their authorities. You keep strange bedfellows...
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  10. Or you could say China copied the Marshal Plan, except loans replace aid in China's more self-serving version.
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  11.  @SS-dc5jz  You don't understand the concept of public debt. An authoritarian state like China would just raise taxes and put whoever complains in a re-education camp.
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  12.  @freepalestine4344  Why, it's a common recurrence.
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  13.  @beinanye  Did your English language skills desert you there?
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  14.  @freepalestine4344  Duh, that's what often happens.
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  15.  @JYHK-c9y  What's it to you? I don't see you participating in this discussion.
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  16.  @aguanteboca666  Sure, Mobutu enjoyed initial support from the US, France and Belgium, but it's overstatement to say so of the European Union. The EU only existed then as a purely economic union. Ironically, Mobutu's biggest supporter was China. China has no scruples when it comes to chumming up with ruthless dictators. Pol Pot must be the most horrendous example, but what's perhaps even more worrying is that the trend continues to this day. Myanmar.
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  17.  @smilo_don  Make yourself personally bankrupt, and you'll notice that your financial options are curtailed. The difference here is that the IMF doesn't want your country for keeps, but China does.
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  18.  @gjwang4385  A troll trolled. You can dish it out but you can't take it. "Some" and "many" are contradictions in terms, by the way. I suppose the 50-cent Army can't afford a proper language school if it can't afford to pay you saps proper wages either.
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  19.  @alexsilent5603  Genocide? No go. China has excelled at that one, too.
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  20. I hope not. The G7 had better steer clear of China's neo-colonialism.
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  21. By their own admission, China is a developing country. Superpower status requires an advanced economy.
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  22.  Joe Xavier  If you must know, China has a colonial past, too, and one that lasted far longer than that of the Western countries that did keep colonies. In fact, more Western countries weren't involved than were, or even endured colonialism themselves. You're not Chinese, or at least pretend not to be, so how come your knowledge of the history of colonialism is so spotty? If we don't learn (the proper lessons) from history, we're bound to repeat it.
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  23. The West can't get away with the shenanigans China is pulling in Africa. We have democratically elected MPs -- direct representatives of the people -- who would call to task any government ministers suspected of neo-colonialism. The media would drag them through the mud, diminishing their chances at re-election. In China, it's all good. No one dares question Xi Jinping.
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  24.  @lvjinbin28  Because in the traditional sense, a loan must be repaid. And because those who take out an unrepayable Chinese loan, can expect a nice personal bonus -- a nice nest egg for when they've fled the country.
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  25.  @lvjinbin28  Why don't the Chinese do same? We do, in fact, issue loans on special terms, but that has less to do with traditional banking and more with development aid. The thinking goes that manageable loans provide a stronger incentive to care for and put whatever is bought with the money to productive use, so as to earn money and use part of it to repay said loans. The risk of the debtors still defaulting on their loans is calculated in. It can be profitable, too. Microcredit has been a success for creditors and debtors alike.
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  26. Developed countries have been pouring aid to Africa for ages. China is rather new to the game.
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