As William S. Burroughs once said, beware of whores who say they don’t want money. The hell they don’t. What they mean is that they want more money; much more, these are the most expensive whores what can be got. Burroughs added, above all, avoid confirmed criminals.
Xi Xinping is pimping out the most expensive whore in the world, BRI, and is leading a cabal of confirmed criminals. And he’s got willingly duped Johns lining up across the Third World. Most especially the Cargo Cult micro-states of the South Pacific.
Who are about to find out in the worst possible way that “gibsmedat” doesn’t come free at all.
For more than a decade, international analysts have warned that China’s global infrastructure diplomacy could be a disaster for poorer nations. Some even suggested the strategy was deliberate – a means to secure strategic international assets.
The Global Times sneered that this was just so much “sour-grapes mentality”. But then, the Global Times is the cheapest tart in Xi’s stable: a paper entirely controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.
But a raft of greedy third-world nations are suddenly waking up with a bad dose of the Chinese Clap. As Sri Lanka collapses into a failed state, Beijing has already pounced, seizing its multi-billion dollar Hambantota Port as “foreclosure” for unpaid BRI debt.
But it’s not the only nation facing such a crisis.
Pakistan is struggling to meet debt repayments. As are the Philippines and Laos.
And the only way out appears to be a Chinese bailout. Or foreclosure.
There’s going to be a whole lot more Chinese debt trapping in the next few years.
The World Bank believes that the world’s 74 lowest-income nations must find $35 billion in loan payments this year. About US$13.1 billion is owed to China.
Somehow, I don’t think China is going to be as forgiving of mendicant Third World nations defaulting on their debts as the West has been. Britain wrote off $41 billion of Third World debt a decade ago: big surprise, they just went right on and accrued new debt. Give a man a fish…
China has reluctantly handed Pakistan a temporary US$4.5 billion lifeline. It accepted a delay in debt repayments earlier this year.
Now the Philippines is also discussing restructuring a $5 billion railway project loan.
Beijing has been less benevolent towards Sri Lanka. Analysts say it doesn’t want to give other struggling debtors ideas.
Debtors like Laos, owe up to $12 billion — or 85% of its total GDP — to China. Nearly $7 billion of that has been sunk into a commercially questionable China-Laos mega railway project.
But as a pimp knows, there’s always another John waiting in line.
China has backed the building of a sports stadium in the Solomon Islands, bridges in Fiji and highways in Papua New Guinea.
NZ Herald
There’s one born every minute.
