BRICS wants to expand
- Thread starter Henri Christophe
- Start date
Just propaganda man. They’re jerking themselves off. Classic stuff
Well, BRICS is not cohesive, sure, but until recently we had a G8 in which a Russia which had invaded two of its neighbours unprovokedly was allowed to be assigned international sporting events and to send athletes in spite of blatant corruption and doping. And everybody bought their raw materials to let them bankroll their wars.
Hey, in fact, right now Europeans are importing more liquefied natural gas from Russia than they did before the war:
Europe’s pipeline gas flows from Russia have fallen to historic lows since the invasion last year as countries wean themselves off it, but to make up for the shortfall shipments of cooled LNG from all over the world, including Russia, have surged and are not subject to any EU sanctions.
EU countries bought 22m cubic metres of Russian LNG between January and July 2023, compared with 15m during the same period in 2021, Global Witness said.
And the USA was allowed, unhindered, to just refuse funding for UNESCO after, of course, its disastrous invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Everybody opposed those invasions… wait, did they? They made a lot of statements and took the US's money anyway, then turned to Putin and scolded him but then took cushy jobs, sinecures and appanages from him.
The nefarious Nicolas Sarkozy conducted a Gypsy deportation campaign. Saudi Arabia is still a major US ally, isn't it? Even if it mows down any Yemenis who try to flee the land where the Saudis are waging a proxy war against the Ayatollahs. Cuba's housing is literally collapsing on top of its inhabitants, but in the UK schools and hospitals are also in risk of physical collapse: in both cases they blame traitors within and enemies abroad.
What's for us to take between one and the other? Joining BRICS is the wrong move for all the reasons that I've mentioned earlier in this thread and more, but it's not as if the established empire were inherently good for us. China is already pillaging Latin America's seaboards and even pirating fish from territorial waters, but how many times have we been under US intervention as well?
That's the difference between anti-imperialism and counter-imperialism. There's an established empire and others who want to displace it, take its place at the imperial centre, but to us it's still being the periphery of a system of exploitation that still means we lose.
Xi's Belt and Road program is just imperialism under the cloak of economic friendship. And it is not working.
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amadeus
Serenity now
I’m not looking at it from your perspective, though: I’m looking at it through the lens of “can it work?” and the conclusion I reached is no because of all of the things at play that are not applicable to the West, which I would say is not cohesive as such but more generally aligned towards important shared interests.
I think the main parties of BRICS are too distant to form a real competitive bloc, politically, culturally, economically, even geographically. I just don’t see it working.
You're not looking at it from our perspective but it's we whose membership in BRICS is prospective.
I already said that I don't think much of a BRICS block and its myriad contradictions.
What I am saying is another thing: how does ‘the West™’, which would be something like the G7 and/or Global North but minus China, convince us not to join when it has been so harmful, evil an often sadistic towards us?
I already said that I don't think much of a BRICS block and its myriad contradictions.
What I am saying is another thing: how does ‘the West™’, which would be something like the G7 and/or Global North but minus China, convince us not to join when it has been so harmful, evil an often sadistic towards us?
155 countries have signed on.
How many signed on is irrelevant.
The dates on these links vary.
China’s Massive Belt and Road Initiative
China’s colossal infrastructure investments may usher in a new era of trade and growth for economies in Asia and beyond. But skeptics worry that China is laying a debt trap for borrowing governments.
www.cfr.org
Abstract from link following:
China is the world’s largest official creditor, but we lack basic facts about the terms and conditions of its lending. Very few contracts between Chinese lenders and their government borrowers have ever been published or studied. This paper is the first systematic analysis of the legal terms of China’s foreign lending. We collect and analyze 100 contracts between Chinese state-owned entities and government borrowers in 24 developing countries in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Oceania, and compare them with those of other bilateral, multilateral, and commercial creditors. Three main insights emerge. First, the Chinese contracts contain unusual confidentiality clauses that bar borrowers from revealing the terms or even the existence of the debt. Second, Chinese lenders seek advantage over other creditors, using collateral arrangements such as lender-controlled revenue accounts and promises to keep the debt out of collective restructuring (“no Paris Club” clauses). Third, cancellation, acceleration, and stabilization clauses in Chinese contracts potentially allow the lenders to influence debtors’ domestic and foreign policies. Even if these terms were unenforceable in court, the mix of confidentiality, seniority, and policy influence could limit the sovereign debtor’s crisis management options and complicate debt renegotiation. Overall, the contracts use creative design to manage credit risks and overcome enforcement hurdles, presenting China as a muscular and commercially-savvy lender to the developing world.
China Reins In Its Belt and Road Program, $1 Trillion Later
After tens of billions of dollars in loans have gone sour and many infrastructure development projects have stalled, Beijing is revamping its troubled initiative.
www.wsj.com
China’s Belt and Road Initiative Meets Resistance in the Developing World - The Wall Street Journal Google Your News Update - WSJ Podcasts
China’s Belt and Road Initiative has seen Beijing spend billions of dollars across the developing world in order to expand its influence. But Wall Street Journal correspondent Saeed Shah joins WSJ What’s News host Luke Vargas to say Beijing is now being forced to contend with a host of problems...
www.wsj.com
The Belt and Road Initiative was and still is primarily a political project, not an economic one. Which means that the majority of projects don't make much economic sense at all, which is why many of the loans have gone bad and the nations burdened by the loans are defaulting on them, or in risk of defaulting.
It is mirrored in domestic mega projects within China that have become spectacular failures. The ghost cities: new cities or city districts almost deserted of people. City districts only half completed, because the funds to built them ran out. Several high speed rail lines in China are caught in endless debt traps; their operating profits are only half or 2/3rds of the value of their debt payments, which means they'll go bust unless the regime subsidizes them forever.
It is mirrored in domestic mega projects within China that have become spectacular failures. The ghost cities: new cities or city districts almost deserted of people. City districts only half completed, because the funds to built them ran out. Several high speed rail lines in China are caught in endless debt traps; their operating profits are only half or 2/3rds of the value of their debt payments, which means they'll go bust unless the regime subsidizes them forever.
Bamspeedy
CheeseBob
Those sources were a joke, right? If not:
Your post seems like a joke if it includes this type of source.
Respect for people's religious beliefs and all that, but if I went to church, I wouldn't ask the pastor/priest for news updates (unless it is news that directly involves the church).
Hal Turner - Wikipedia
These two are more 'par for the course' for 'Alternative' news sources. Doesn't mean they are any good.
Limited time spent on those sites, marfoogle seems the more outlandish and sensationalist (exaggerates events for clickbait).
Its highly relevant because why sign up for it? If economically its a wash what value can it provide? Is China tricking uneducated nations or is it using its overvalued currency to leverage what it tells the developing nations are real infrastructural advancements designed for them to use in perpetuity? Theres a problem here where China is both pursuing economic imperialism and simultaneously structuring its loan programs under far more generous terms than Western loan programs, which generally have all of the same problems but with the added real and already extant fact of those organizations then having significant leverage over policy in those debtor nations. In other words, since the status quo is the IMF and World Bank forcing austerity programs like canceling school lunches, and prefers to finance profitable ventures, the Chinese's weird insistence on actually building the railways and ports has to come off as not so bad a deal.How many signed on is irrelevant.
The dates on these links vary.
China’s Massive Belt and Road Initiative
China’s colossal infrastructure investments may usher in a new era of trade and growth for economies in Asia and beyond. But skeptics worry that China is laying a debt trap for borrowing governments.
Abstract from link following:
China is the world’s largest official creditor, but we lack basic facts about the terms and conditions of its lending. Very few contracts between Chinese lenders and their government borrowers have ever been published or studied. This paper is the first systematic analysis of the legal terms of China’s foreign lending. We collect and analyze 100 contracts between Chinese state-owned entities and government borrowers in 24 developing countries in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Oceania, and compare them with those of other bilateral, multilateral, and commercial creditors. Three main insights emerge. First, the Chinese contracts contain unusual confidentiality clauses that bar borrowers from revealing the terms or even the existence of the debt. Second, Chinese lenders seek advantage over other creditors, using collateral arrangements such as lender-controlled revenue accounts and promises to keep the debt out of collective restructuring (“no Paris Club” clauses). Third, cancellation, acceleration, and stabilization clauses in Chinese contracts potentially allow the lenders to influence debtors’ domestic and foreign policies. Even if these terms were unenforceable in court, the mix of confidentiality, seniority, and policy influence could limit the sovereign debtor’s crisis management options and complicate debt renegotiation. Overall, the contracts use creative design to manage credit risks and overcome enforcement hurdles, presenting China as a muscular and commercially-savvy lender to the developing world.
China Reins In Its Belt and Road Program, $1 Trillion Later
After tens of billions of dollars in loans have gone sour and many infrastructure development projects have stalled, Beijing is revamping its troubled initiative.
China’s Belt and Road Initiative Meets Resistance in the Developing World - The Wall Street Journal Google Your News Update - WSJ Podcasts
China’s Belt and Road Initiative has seen Beijing spend billions of dollars across the developing world in order to expand its influence. But Wall Street Journal correspondent Saeed Shah joins WSJ What’s News host Luke Vargas to say Beijing is now being forced to contend with a host of problems...
It is impossible to have a project that is political and not economical and vice versa. All economics is political and likewise the Chinese program is designed to target what it sees as material political gains. The domestic projects have indeed halted and banks are going bust, but from the perspective of the Deng Xiaoping program, it worked like a charm. They will happily eat the debt and subsidize their rails forever if they believe they've created a material basis for the economy to thrive.
To give an example, Japan went bust in the 90s after two decades of great growth. But how is Japan now? Still a powerful and wealthy industrial economy. And before that it was poor as hell. So you cant shake much of a stick at industrializing damned be all consequences.
The Belt and Road initiative can be looked at two ways: the overall concept and goals for the program for China and any of the individual projects and their success or failure financially and as a benefit to the nation when finished. For China the Program is all about economic imperialism as well as income from the debts incurred by the target nations. The tools nations use today are different than those used in the 18th and 19th Centuries, but the goals are the same: influence and control of those participating.
One project I have a small bit of familiarity with is the new airport terminal in Zanzibar, Tanzania. It opened in September of 2020.
There may be some successes within Belt and Road, but the failures are pretty glaring. The success of their imperialism is yet to unfold.
One project I have a small bit of familiarity with is the new airport terminal in Zanzibar, Tanzania. It opened in September of 2020.
The new terminal is huge and has plenty of future capacity. I spent 10 hours there in July. In a space the size of football field there was seating for less than 50 people. I found one charging outlet in the whole place and that had 2 outlets. There was no seating within 50 feet of that outlet. I had to sit on the floor while using it. It took China 9 years to build this terminal and it fails to meet the most common need for today's travelers after bathrooms, food and seating: charging.from the link below said:
There may be some successes within Belt and Road, but the failures are pretty glaring. The success of their imperialism is yet to unfold.
Yes yesyes, but as said they can and expect to eat a lot of debt in the name of developing capacity. You say the terminal doesn't meet the needs of travellers, meaning you, but you were able to sit and wait for your plane correct? It did arrive and you did eventually board it? So you had to sit on the floor. Well in the big picture, that's the kind of comfort that sometimes makes economic sense to cut.
For instance let's move away from the finances for a moment and zoom in on your point about economic imperialism. In the case of the Tanzania airport, what are the other benefits China could expect to accrue from the terminal that are not related to cost overruns or debt repayment? How about for Tanzania?
For instance let's move away from the finances for a moment and zoom in on your point about economic imperialism. In the case of the Tanzania airport, what are the other benefits China could expect to accrue from the terminal that are not related to cost overruns or debt repayment? How about for Tanzania?
The new terminal was built specifically for international travelers. The older terminal is used by those traveling within Tanzania and nearby neighboring countries. I fit the mold of an international traveler and have similar expectations about what is needed in the way of airport amenities. If you look at the picture I took, it even looks newly installed.
Spoiler :
In any case the Chinese construction company likely did well off the project: jobs and money. Zanzibar has benefited with a new terminal that could enhance it standing with international travelers. I have no idea about the political and diplomatic relationships between China and Tanzania or how they might have changed since 2013 when Belt and Road began and the now debt situation.
Snowygerry
Deity
I don't think Argentina attending BRICS meetings or not is all that important, to anyone outside Argentina, if there is some advantage to be had by all means go for it, certainly I can see no clear disadvantage.
Just be careful you don't catch communism or something
Oh I get that, it’s just I’ve been through many airports too and by my experience ones like Las Vegas and O’Hare suck plentifully. And don’t get me started on LAX! I’ve had ok airport experiences in Europe and Asia but in general the whole commuter air industry seems designed to make profit, not comfort.
The chairs can come later as long as they can land planes now.
Jobs - where? Tanzania. The company also took a heady dose itself. This an international finance and construction arrangement for exporting technical expertise to developing nations at profit that was pioneered by Japan. The key difference now being that the Chinese state is managing these developments collectively along the lines of its belt and road initiative. Which yes gives them control over economic ventures and infrastructure for these nations. It also provides the bones of an import-export relationship. It might not have been possible to get lots of Chinese, Singaporean, or Japanese investors to that part of Tanzania - but now it is.
EnglishEdward
Deity
Cynical me wonders if the reason that Birdjaguar didn't have a seat at the airport may have been
because the seating was left for the locals to supply as local input and/or had been stolen.
because the seating was left for the locals to supply as local input and/or had been stolen.
No, there were empty seats; the seats, through, were 50 feet from the only charger. The building was largely empty until 30 minutes before Air France opened their desk. My point was the terrible design of a modern terminal that did not accommodate charging. The Chinese know how to build magnificent airports; they just build this one poorly. It shows a lack of attention to detail. What else might have been left out? I suspect that Zanzibar is still recovering from the lack of tourists during the pandemic. Only one or two international flights a day is a different problem.
FriendlyFire
Codex WMDicanious
While Chinese loans are tied to infrastructure, though it dose seem to be not working out very well
Generally though it just feels like a repeat of what a happened before
China spent $240bn on belt and road bailouts from 2008 to 2021, study finds
Chinese state-backed lenders released bailout funds to 22 countries, including Argentina, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Ukraine
The failure of several infrastructure projects and the debt problems experienced by several recipient countries, hurt by the rising costs of servicing their loans
Emergency rescue lending is a very risky business
But Chinese support is not cheap. The study’s authors found that the average interest rate attached to a Chinese rescue loan was 5%, compared with 2% for a typical rescue loan from the IMF.
“Beijing is ultimately trying to rescue its own banks. That’s why it has gotten into the risky business of international bailout lending.”
China spent $240bn on belt and road bailouts from 2008 to 2021, study finds
Rise in emergency financing for other countries since 2016 correlates with drop in infrastructure lendingwww.theguardian.com
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