Nobody thinks that China is giving loans as a present. Of course there’s self interest on their part and establishing an alternative to the American-lead international financial order benefits them.
…but it also benefits pretty much every single other nation that joins it. Imagine if there were a bunch of countries that could trade with Cuba without consequences because they don’t rely on US dollars. Imagine if countries in Africa could nationalize their resources and redistribute their wealth without fear of international economic reprisal. Imagine if the hegemon of this new financial bloc regularly forgave loans when the investments didn’t turn out as hoped, instead of imposing neoliberal austerity laws they wrote themselves on the countries that took them.
I’m in one of those countries receiving the Belt and Road initiative (Hungary), and we still have the austerity measures, but hey, there’s a percentage-based tax break system that gives more to people the richer they’re (they had to put a limit on the maximum amount of money after too many backlash), and no one in the Chinese government are complaining (not requesting to change it, complaining) about most of the media is in the hands of party henchmen.
AFAIK, austerity in Hungary is the current program of the conservative ruling party, not an imposition by a foreign institution like the EU or the IMF. The BRI investments in Hungary are also relatively recent so it’s too early to say if they’ve succeeded or failed, what I was referencing was the wave of loan forgiveness China has offered to poorer countries, mostly in response to the economic fallout from COVID.
Nobody thinks that China is giving loans as a present. Of course there’s self interest on their part and establishing an alternative to the American-lead international financial order benefits them.
…but it also benefits pretty much every single other nation that joins it. Imagine if there were a bunch of countries that could trade with Cuba without consequences because they don’t rely on US dollars. Imagine if countries in Africa could nationalize their resources and redistribute their wealth without fear of international economic reprisal. Imagine if the hegemon of this new financial bloc regularly forgave loans when the investments didn’t turn out as hoped, instead of imposing neoliberal austerity laws they wrote themselves on the countries that took them.
I’m in one of those countries receiving the Belt and Road initiative (Hungary), and we still have the austerity measures, but hey, there’s a percentage-based tax break system that gives more to people the richer they’re (they had to put a limit on the maximum amount of money after too many backlash), and no one in the Chinese government are complaining (not requesting to change it, complaining) about most of the media is in the hands of party henchmen.
AFAIK, austerity in Hungary is the current program of the conservative ruling party, not an imposition by a foreign institution like the EU or the IMF. The BRI investments in Hungary are also relatively recent so it’s too early to say if they’ve succeeded or failed, what I was referencing was the wave of loan forgiveness China has offered to poorer countries, mostly in response to the economic fallout from COVID.