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– They can finance stuff like this on credit unchecked by ny public opposition to growing national debt – Having started later than western countries, their pu
by matt4077 10y ago
– They can finance stuff like this on credit unchecked by ny public opposition to growing national debt
– Having started later than western countries, their public debt (41% GDP) is much lower
– High GDP growth rates further lower the effective burden of their debt
– They can act largely unencumbered by the historic debt of colonialism, while western countries face opposition both internally as well as locally in the project countries
– They have less qualms of working with some regimes with less-than-stellar records on human rights
– Lower regard for human rights means lower risk of political tensions between China and the host countries, which could otherwise endanger investments. Western countries, conversely, want to avoid a situation where they have to compromise on morals to protect their investments (c.f. China)
– China has a lot more experience with large infrastructure projects than any other country.
– China brings their own workers to these projects, which are paid far below any construction workers you could find anywhere in industrial countries
– The politics of China allow for "Grand Plans" and their quick approval. Democratic processes would almost certainly stop any such project in a western country because it's impossible to write a reliable business plan for them. These are bets made on a whim and to a certain degree driven by politics and emotions.
– Western democratic countries generally regard such projects to be the provenance of the market.
- tomcam 10y ago- They give zero fucks about environmental impact
- averagewall 10y agoEnvironment? It's a desert, you can hardly break it worse than it already is. Also, it's Africa. Concern for the environment is a luxury for rich countries where the people already have a good quality of life and can put more effort into secondary effects like pollution/etc. Ultimately, humans are more important than the environment so where you can give a big boost to the former at a moderate cost to the latter, it can be a worthwhile trade-off.
- elcapitan 10y ago"Concern for the environment is a luxury for rich countries" because they have methods in place to deal with pollution. In agricultural societies it's not a luxury, but a necessity. Polluting the ground and water has very direct negative health impact, because people can't filter the water or use measures against ground pollution.
- mr_overalls 10y agoTry holding your breath while you count your money, and see how long it takes you to start appreciating negative externalities.
- mistersquid 10y agoThe African continent has deserts as well as millions of acres fertile land. As with all ecosystems, deserts change over time. The fossil record shows, for example, that the Sahara desert once sustained aquatic animals and lush vegetation not present today. It is environmentally prudent to avoid polluting all ecosystems whatever their appearance. Doing so ensures the longevity and continuation of all life on this planet, including that of humans. EDIT: punctuation.
- mikeash 10y agoLooks like mostly not-desert to me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Ethiopia#/media/File:Ethiopia_map_of_Köppen_climate_classification.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Ethiopia#/media/F...
- tomcam 10y agoAgree completely. My point was value-free. It simply makes a staggering difference in how much can get done in how short a time. By the way, the desert is an incredibly rich, complex ecosystem, no matter how bare it looks on the surface
- markdown 10y ago> They have less qualms of working with some regimes with less-than-stellar records on human rights Citation needed. US corporations not only readily work with dodgy regimes, they also work with drug cartels. China has horrible human rights records, but US corporations readily deal with the Chinese govt when there is money or market-share to be gained.
- akiselev 10y agoSince when do US corporations represent the people of the United States and their government? The US has done, and continues to do, some evil shit but there is clearly a much more effective feedback loop between American politicians and their constituents than between the Politburo and the Chinese population. That feedback loop includes peoples' beliefs in the principles of the United States and the Constitution, even though a tiny minority (corporate executives) clearly do not.
- markdown 10y agoI get your point, but I fail to see the relevance here. Chinese corporations work with despots and unsavoury regimes. US corporations work with despots and unsavoury regimes.
- akiselev 10y agoSorry, I'm conflating the Chinese government with the corporations that do the actual work on the ground and generate the revenue. The US does get involved a lot in foreign affairs on behalf of American companies (i.e. reporting on Airbus's attempted bribery of Saudi officials in order to benefit Boeing) but if my experience in Russia is indicative of how it works in China, the government and corporations are far more intertwined. In Russia, to get stuff done like get building permits or guarantee reliable logistics, you quite often have to resort to bribes and anything at the scale of large corporations requires complex relationships between the business owners and politicians/bureaucrats because the latter can easily use "legal" means to take control of the company and reprivatize it to their cronies. These are broad strokes but there are plenty of publicly known examples like Sergei Magnitsky, who died in a prison cell after discovering that high level officers took control of a foreign investment firm and claimed hundreds of millions of dollars in tax returns from the government. Based on my understanding of this expansion into Africa, the Chinese government is heavily involved in negotiating mineral rights and uses its might to enforce the security of investments that are made by corporations, which are effectively state owned or at the very least can become so on the whims of the Politburo.
- EdiX 10y agogeopolitical advantage: when their internal labor becomes too expensive they'll have a place to outsource to.