Comments by "Kevin Street" (@Kevin_Street) on "China's International Debt Crisis" video.

  1. That was very interesting, although not great news for developing countries. It seems there's no magic formula that can help developing nations grow their economies. If I understand right, the Belt And Road initiative was supposed to be different from Western loans in that it was strictly business focused. There was no paternalistic supervision or advice from China to these countries on what to do with the money. If they said they wanted a port China would build them a port. The overall intention was to increase trade links between China and the rest of the world, but in many cases it seemed the Chinese were happy to let the recipients of the loans decide for themselves how that could be best accomplished. Well, it doesn't seem to have worked. Many of the loans are in default and the infrastructure they paid for doesn't seem to have increased economic growth in the nations that received them. If only there was a middle ground between loaning money to developing nations with a strictly business and infrastructure focus, and taking care to ensure that local corruption doesn't squander the funds.
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