Comments by "Doncarlo" (@doujinflip) on "The Myth of the Chinese Debt Trap in Africa" video.

  1. It's the corruption that makes it risky, hence why Western aid packages limit themselves to those who promise and show improvements to the underlying governance. China isn't as picky, and their loans feed into the corruption while the people get a flaky build and practically no knowledge shared on how to maintain and expand it themselves due to the related exclusionary service contracts with Chinese companies.
    66
  2. America's infrastructure is falling apart because it's old, like Mao Zedong just died old. I've driven on China's roads and notice that it quickly degrades if they didn't resurface the whole thing like twice a year, which makes me wonder how it's holding up underneath because inspections and retrofit projects don't seem to happen as often despite the rusting guard rails and flaking concrete. Though at least they run a street sweeper down the two-wheeler lanes like every other night.
    10
  3. Western Europe, South Korea, and Japan beg to differ. The difference is the competence of the local institutions who decide if the foreign aid becomes durable development or wasted in corruption.
    2
  4. Infrastructure has to be built correctly though. If you approve the paving of primarily vehicle roads, you end up dependent on owning and driving relatively expensive cars even for short trips when walking or biking would have sufficed like before. Then without sidewalks, crossings, and viaducts, your infrastructure project ends up literally separating communities from each other. And then you have to pay for ongoing maintenance indefinitely, because otherwise they become more dangerous to be around over time.
    1
  5. The difference is China isn't as afraid to waste their money on local corruption. Going forward the difference would also be how quickly those projects deteriorate due to more shoddy quality without constant maintenance often exclusively contracted to Chinese companies, and you're left struggling to figure out what they did because they took the blueprints, equipment manuals, and spare parts.
    1