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China is making economic investments that may lean heavily in their favor in the future, but they're absolutely nowhere near behaving anything like old colonial
by forgotmyoldname 5y ago
China is making economic investments that may lean heavily in their favor in the future, but they're absolutely nowhere near behaving anything like old colonial powers.
Belgium was systematically cutting off hands and it's estimated that half the population of Congo died during their reign and resources completely stripped with nothing in exchange. China is, at worst, maybe leaving some countries with a hard to pay off debt and modern infrastructure in exchange for stripping their resources.
- atlasunshrugged 5y agoOkay, China is a little worse than that but certainly nowhere near the old colonial powers. There are plenty of videos of Chinese foremen beating African workers at mines and places in the DRC where they have been awarded concessions in very opaque deals. In addition, they actually often don't build the infrastructure they promise (look at the large infrastructure for mining concession package in the DRC and how much has actually been built that they promised), and because they do not work with local stakeholders and instead deal directly with the elites they help to perpetuate the status quo and enrich the elites which helps them maintain power and prevents the countries from becoming less authoritarian and more democratic (and if you don't care about the level of authoritarian/democracy, it also means that quality of life is lower for the vast majority of the pop because the gains are held at the top).