this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2024
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chapotraphouse
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Russia also has a lot of influence in the global south that China lacks. You can give me all the history lessons you want as to why that is but at the end of the day it’s the Russian flag you see rebels waving and not the Chinese one.
Another factor that people often neglect is that Russia has been canceling debt across the Global South owed to both the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia. From 1991 to 2018, Russia has canceled over $140 billion debt in the Global South countries. Just last year, Russia canceled another $23 billion debt in Africa.
Russia is a very weak economy but even Putin understands that these African countries cannot possibly repay their debt. Russia could have used the debt to push for privatization in Africa and take over their assets to further exploitation as a colonial power, like what Western imperialists are doing through IMF.
Russia doesn’t do that. It is fundamentally not the same as a Western imperialist power no matter how much people try to equate Russia to the US empire.
Look at how the French furthered its colonialist ambitions in Africa through CFA franc and treat those countries and you’d instantly understand why people from Burkina Faso like Russia so much.
On the other hand, and unfortunately, China still has some issues with their image across the Global South (and I say this as a Chinese myself). Many countries are still quite suspicious of China’s intentions and there is an impression that China is only interested in doing business where profit matters.
The Chinese geopolitical strategy since Mao’s time has been to maximize benefit to its internal development even at the expense of other countries of the developing world, which is fundamentally different from the Soviet Union where foreign aid was dished out to arm anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles. As a result, even Russia as a capitalist country today continues to benefit from the good will the Soviet Union had sown over the years.
This is why I always say that if China is serious about leading the anti-imperialist movement against the global hegemon, it can start by using its vast amount of foreign reserves to pay back the Global South debt. This will improve China’s image in the eyes of many Global South countries.
isnt china already doing this?
is there some truth to his or is it another fabrication from western media?
China has canceled and restructured some debt, but not paying back Africa’s debt with their dollar reserves yet. From 2000-2019, China has canceled $3.4 billion of Africa’s debt. China has also waived 23 interest-free loans in 19 African countries in 2022. For reference, Russia canceled $23 billion of Africa’s debt in 2022 alone.
Ultimately, Africa’s debt problem does not stem from China, who only provides a small portion of its total debt (most of which are owed to Western countries), though China lending Africa in dollar is a problem because it further entrenches the need of these countries to earn dollars to pay back their creditors. China has restructured some debt through IMF’s Special Drawing Rights (SDR), but that’s going through the IMF.
The total amount of Africa’s foreign debt is about $800 billion. China’s foreign reserve is also about $800 billion. China can do a lot to save and relieve those countries if it really wants to.
The impression came from the countries who dealt with China themselves. It depends on the Chinese banks who made the loans. There is a lot of exaggeration from Western propaganda, like China is setting a debt trap in Africa, which is false. If anything, China lending those countries with its dollars actually help entrench Western debt trap, not China’s!
What we want to see is instead of lending out its foreign reserves as loans to Africa, China should use those reserves to pay back Africa’s dollar debt, then lend out its infrastructure loans in yuan (or BRICS currency or whatever, as long as it’s not dollars) to fund clean energy and development projects.
The problem for China is that they don’t know what to do with all the dollars they have accumulated from exporting their goods to the US, since they are practically junk papers, so instead of buying US treasury bonds, they lend them out to developing countries via Belt and Road to help develop those countries. But it also entrenches those countries to further debt bondage, not to China, but to the US since these countries now have to earn dollars to repay these loans. Restructuring those loans into yuan and then canceling the debt altogether is the only way to go.
The US dollar is so evil, its fascinating how everything US made is harmful to this world lol.