Comments by "Doncarlo" (@doujinflip) on "West rethinks China’s Belt and Road plan as debt fears grow | DW Business Special" video.

  1. It's the cost of all those roads and bridges, especially ongoing maintenance for inferior quality builds on "assets" that fail to attract anywhere near the amount of use it expected. Overcapacity is a thing. If you study other new big projects like airports, you'll see there's a reason they build up a single site over multiple stages instead of going for 100% completion of the master plan.
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  2. Most politicians prefer dictatorship domestically. I'd wager the people in general would much rather be democratized citizens over dictated subjects at home.
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  3. If you think the IMF is bad, try taking a Chinese state loan where the interest rates are higher and the satisfaction terms are more vague and up for the lender to reinterpret at their convenience... except for lowered repayments and especially debt forgiveness that you need most.
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  4. Probably because you're not in charge of keeping Chinese loan sharks off of your property.
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  5. Western alternatives aren't as attractive because they often demand improvements to governance. "No-strings attached" Chinese ones still have room for the politicians to skim from.
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  6. Western loans ask for lower interest rates and are more willing to be renegotiated. China by comparison is a predatory subprime loan shark who want their money back, even when their overall numbers are lower than the Western ones already taken. It doesn't help the BRI recipients don't get the productive human capital development they expected either, since so much of even the most menial tasks are done by imported Chinese workers.
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  7. Negative assets. Their builds keep physically falling apart, don't get as much actual use as expected, and are much more expensive to maintain than was promised.
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  8. The West has better damage control. Not so salvageable are PRC-built toppling bridges, cracked dams, and leaking tunnels.
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