With borrowing costs rising and western governments including the UK cutting their aid budgets, unsustainable debts are driving a development crisis across the global south.
In the latest evidence, Ethiopia last week faced the threat of being sued by its creditors in the English courts, after long-running negotiations about restructuring $1bn (£740m) of its debt collapsed.
The largest chunk of Ethiopia’s debt is owed to China. Who are not, exactly, playing ball here. There is a – small – piece of standard commercial debt. Which is what this argument is about. And under the general rules here each creditor should be treated equally. No, this doesn;t mean exactly the same number because there will be levels of seniority, hypothecation of certain revenues to certain repayment streams and so on. But it does mean that everyone needs to have access to the terms on offer to everyone else so equality of treatment can be considered.
No one will show the commercial bondholders the terms China is getting. Impasse, eh?
Then there’s this:
Tim Jones, policy director at Debt Justice, said: “Debt relief is taking far too long and leaving countries at high risk of debt crisis. The UK must use its likely presidency of the G20 in 2027 to champion major changes, including deeper and quicker debt relief and a suspension of payments during negotiations.”
Oh, right. Borrow money, declare it unpayable, negotiate for a decade, get to spend all the money without any repayments. Like that’s going to help, right?
Debt relief?
Everything you think of as “wokeness” is simply an epiphenomenon of demographic feminization.
https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-great-feminization/?status=none&utm_medium=email&utm_source=CampaignMonitor_Editorial&utm_campaign=MORN%20%2020251020%20%20HOUSE%20%20KJ+CID_7c97dff296605fdbd2e59ab14b07c798
That makes a lot of sense, Theo.
There will come a time, in the near future, when China will literally own most of Africa.
I suspect that there will be claims for reparation from this colonial slave empire from L. Henry esq.
Possibly. But one has to wonder what good it’ll do them. How do they propose collecting their debts? Africa doesn’t even have the concept of honesty & straight dealing.
Dig it out of the ground, BiS. They invest in these places solely for the raw materials. They’re not interested in political control.
Otto
Absolutely and if the natives get restless my guess is the PLA will either directly or through local proxies simply remove the problem at source. Which will of course cause a minor issue for those that presume only White people can be racist and the rest of the world is like a 1960s Coke commercial.
Perhaps the Chinese will claim that all the money was really invested by the wicked whites and that the protesters should have a go at them. Not the poor oppressed slanty-eyes.
I’m sure the people who actually take this sort of thing seriously would all agree that those wicked white-skinned wogs are the ones who are really guilty.
I’m with BiS on this. China thinks debt slavery plus backhanders will keep Africans in line, but at some point, someone will think, fuck it, I will just nick all this infrastructure and write off the debt. The PLA has literally zero capacity to project power in Africa.
They just need to nip down to the video shop and grab a copy of Raid on Entebbe to see how it is done.
They have enormous capacity to project power if they are… unsqueamish.
Chemical warfare or biological weapons? Look at COVID? And surely if they take control of Djibouti they can start building Airstrips to send in troops against a bunch of headhackers?
Plenty of examples of third-worlders nationalising assets previously owned by westerners, why would they treat easterners any differently. Anglo-Dutch oil, the Suez canal, oil in Venezuela. China either hasn’t seen that history or has a different plan. However it has always seemed to me that Chinese influence doesn’t travel, that China really doesn’t understand foreign.
That’s what I was thinking. Going in & digging it out of the ground was what the west did. Didn’t always work out, did it?
But Chinese are white-adjacent.
“Debt Justice”
Axiom: any qualifier attached to the word justice implies “no justice”.
The very definition of “debt” is that you have to pay it back. Don’t want to pay back debt? then don’t get any debt. It’s not difficult
Don’t forget the observation of the late Lord Bauer (or the ‘Anti-Murphy’)
‘Aid (and Debt being the reverse of Aid) is like champagne, in success you deserve more of it, and in failure you need it’ –
He was in favour of it being grants rather than Loans for that reason, among many others.
Murhpy says they should take on MORE debt to make their citizenry wealthy, then they can tax it back. Or something.