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I accept the analysis that the Chinese approach will likely be superior to the olden ways of Europe, but I believe you are mixing old Europe with modern China.

I accept the analysis that the Chinese approach will likely be superior to the olden ways of Europe, but I believe you are mixing old Europe with modern China. Xxi century Europe is not fueling wars in Europe nor ruled by unbridled rulers greed like in the 1700s. Last 200 years of Europe are gone in modern Europe. For better and worse. Europe is an elderly continent. Also even the assertion that there was a reputation loss on Europe, while plausible is actually not true. Most of the colonies still prefer to trade with their old colonial masters. This is true for the portuguese, the Spanish and the French and English. For example Portugal(ex colonial master) goes toe to toe with China as the importer source of Angola. If reputation is so important it has an inverse correlation to what you assert. No way the portuguese can have a negative reputation and still compete with the Chinese. Its the other way around. The only way the portuguese can compete is because there is a past connection and perhaps reputation. The reason the Chinese thrive in Africa is the same why they thrive every where else: they have boatloads of goods and personnel and provide it cheaper than anyone. No reputation there, pure economics. On the contrary, local communities are distrustful of the chinese(which is amazing and defies reason but so the human societies go). How weird are we humans that we privilege relations with our previous oppressor rather than someone who can be better but we know nothing about. https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Country/AGO/Year/2017/TradeFlow/Import https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Country/AGO/Yea...

raldi 5y ago
Could a big part of it be simply that people prefer to trade with others who speak their language?
ashwagary 5y ago
After WW2 there seemed to be a lull in unbridled greed on the surface but it is only because financialization of the world was version 2 of colonialism. Europeans still harvest the wealth of a large majority of the world and where it can't there will be wars, assassinations, and coups. The return of fuel to conflicting European war machines is also starting to occur as the harvesting of Asian and African wealth has started to marginally slow down mainly due to Chinese and some Indian activity. This greed was never really dealt with on a civilizational level in Europe, it just changed forms and still needs to be addressed. The reason the Chinese thrive in Africa is because they have been an honest trading partner for over 1000 years. Many of China's non-western trading partners trust them more than any other group with close to similar economic scale. This is not a popular truth in western media because the ruling capital class that funds those orgs understand what this trend means in the long term. >How weird are we humans that we privilege relations with our previous oppressor On the contrary, on the surface it seems trade between colonized countries and their oppressors is voluntary but it's not the case. Central and South Americans violating European harvesting of wealth will still be sanctioned, couped and/or assassinated, the same is true for most African countries (For example, France by itself assassinated 22 African presidents in the last 40 or so years, they still harvest the wealth of 1/3rd of all African countries). This is the continuation through financialization I spoke of earlier and the arrangement is obviously not enjoyed by the majority of the people that regularly lose their popular liberative leaders and are kept in poverty to continue satisfying European greed. This activity is only recently being interrupted by Chinese trade expansion... De-dollarization/de-euroization and attempted re-routing of global trade are just the beginning of the chains being removed from the rest of the world.
- ptsneves 5y ago
  Your answer stresses a lot the word greed which I normally use as an ideological canary for communist/socialist thinking (I come from a socialist country so i know the nomenclature). "the chains being removed from the rest of the world" also makes me suspicious of the answer's intellectual motives. Also you did not refute any of my data thesis. Another commenter, asserts that language similarity seems to be the predictor for trade partner preference. I think he is right. It plays an outsize role, much bigger than reputation, like asserted in your post. > For example, France by itself assassinated 22 African presidents in the last 40 or so years, they still harvest the wealth of 1/3rd of all African countries) Yes France is still a very active colonial master with massive intervention in ex-colonies but you can't be serious if you think post-war France is rich and developed because they harvest natural resources. I would actually say that France's activities in Africa are actually detrimental to it's own good and are the product of an old style doctrine of influence and national prestige(again similar to Portugal). This in opposition to a doctrine of market based competition, where they already excel with highly advanced products. The main advantage i can concede is that they brain drain their ex-colonies. That is the real damage, and it was arguably the reason ex colonies have so much difficulty in getting up. Their best minds migrate to the Europe. Not by force mind you, pure market economics and convenience like the language. My master thesis advisor was a Cote-de-Ivoir dude that would have been a great asset in his country. He is black and i am ethnically Portuguese, so the racial dynamics of white over black does not apply. Of course he never left Europe after getting his degree. That is the real damage, but not really some chain or cruelty like you mention. Just people doing their best to improve their lives. Life is full of unintended consequences and sometimes, greed is actually best, not the least because it is simple and has predictable emergent phenomena. A bounded problem like greed is better than an open world of rainbows of good feelings.
  - ashwagary 5y ago
    >Your answer stresses a lot the word greed which I normally use as an ideological canary There are two types of greed, zero-sum and win-win. Greed, to the point of becoming detrimental to societies around you, is objectively anti-human and this is the version (zero-sum greed) I'm discussing. >Yes France is still a very active colonial master with massive intervention in ex-colonies but you can't be serious if you think post-war France is rich and developed because they harvest natural resources. I mentioned France as an example but similar activity can be seen in Britain, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland and other European countries. Africa is still the largest net creditor to Europe (meaning they fund European economies, sort of a backwards charity). The natural resources extracted continent wide are some of the most valuable in the world. Take a quick look at the mining operations in the background of many African conflicts and you will see the European fingerprint. This is true from the West, Central Africa all the way down to South Africa. Most European gold, platinum, diamond, cobalt, nickle, boxite, manganese, uranium, copper etc wealth is extracted from these countries at extremely low prices or even free due to the financial colonization activity I mentioned earlier through central banks and other means. Keeping Africa poor and underdeveloped is the only way to create a price ceiling on these valuable resources. This is why the underdevelopment of African countries was a western priority for so many decades. So much so, that the 2nd UN secretary general was assassinated over this specific issue. >https://www.history.com/news/dag-hammarskjold-death-plane-crash https://www.history.com/news/dag-hammarskjold-death-plane-cr... This is also why China has suddenly become an enemy in Western media and among the western ruling class. They are violating this economic requirement that provides welfare to Western economies. Their accelerating activity over the last 10-20 years gives Africans direct access to international markets and routes around predatory European nations...this allows actual free market price discovery to occur (aka the core of capitalism). I understand why many western commoners would want to deny this problematic history but the ruling and international banking class is very aware of these facts. They know where their bread is buttered.

raldi 5y ago

Could a big part of it be simply that people prefer to trade with others who speak their language?

ashwagary 5y ago

After WW2 there seemed to be a lull in unbridled greed on the surface but it is only because financialization of the world was version 2 of colonialism. Europeans still harvest the wealth of a large majority of the world and where it can't there will be wars, assassinations, and coups. The return of fuel to conflicting European war machines is also starting to occur as the harvesting of Asian and African wealth has started to marginally slow down mainly due to Chinese and some Indian activity. This greed was never really dealt with on a civilizational level in Europe, it just changed forms and still needs to be addressed. The reason the Chinese thrive in Africa is because they have been an honest trading partner for over 1000 years. Many of China's non-western trading partners trust them more than any other group with close to similar economic scale. This is not a popular truth in western media because the ruling capital class that funds those orgs understand what this trend means in the long term. >How weird are we humans that we privilege relations with our previous oppressor On the contrary, on the surface it seems trade between colonized countries and their oppressors is voluntary but it's not the case. Central and South Americans violating European harvesting of wealth will still be sanctioned, couped and/or assassinated, the same is true for most African countries (For example, France by itself assassinated 22 African presidents in the last 40 or so years, they still harvest the wealth of 1/3rd of all African countries). This is the continuation through financialization I spoke of earlier and the arrangement is obviously not enjoyed by the majority of the people that regularly lose their popular liberative leaders and are kept in poverty to continue satisfying European greed. This activity is only recently being interrupted by Chinese trade expansion... De-dollarization/de-euroization and attempted re-routing of global trade are just the beginning of the chains being removed from the rest of the world.

ptsneves 5y ago
Your answer stresses a lot the word greed which I normally use as an ideological canary for communist/socialist thinking (I come from a socialist country so i know the nomenclature). "the chains being removed from the rest of the world" also makes me suspicious of the answer's intellectual motives. Also you did not refute any of my data thesis. Another commenter, asserts that language similarity seems to be the predictor for trade partner preference. I think he is right. It plays an outsize role, much bigger than reputation, like asserted in your post. > For example, France by itself assassinated 22 African presidents in the last 40 or so years, they still harvest the wealth of 1/3rd of all African countries) Yes France is still a very active colonial master with massive intervention in ex-colonies but you can't be serious if you think post-war France is rich and developed because they harvest natural resources. I would actually say that France's activities in Africa are actually detrimental to it's own good and are the product of an old style doctrine of influence and national prestige(again similar to Portugal). This in opposition to a doctrine of market based competition, where they already excel with highly advanced products. The main advantage i can concede is that they brain drain their ex-colonies. That is the real damage, and it was arguably the reason ex colonies have so much difficulty in getting up. Their best minds migrate to the Europe. Not by force mind you, pure market economics and convenience like the language. My master thesis advisor was a Cote-de-Ivoir dude that would have been a great asset in his country. He is black and i am ethnically Portuguese, so the racial dynamics of white over black does not apply. Of course he never left Europe after getting his degree. That is the real damage, but not really some chain or cruelty like you mention. Just people doing their best to improve their lives. Life is full of unintended consequences and sometimes, greed is actually best, not the least because it is simple and has predictable emergent phenomena. A bounded problem like greed is better than an open world of rainbows of good feelings.
- ashwagary 5y ago
  >Your answer stresses a lot the word greed which I normally use as an ideological canary There are two types of greed, zero-sum and win-win. Greed, to the point of becoming detrimental to societies around you, is objectively anti-human and this is the version (zero-sum greed) I'm discussing. >Yes France is still a very active colonial master with massive intervention in ex-colonies but you can't be serious if you think post-war France is rich and developed because they harvest natural resources. I mentioned France as an example but similar activity can be seen in Britain, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland and other European countries. Africa is still the largest net creditor to Europe (meaning they fund European economies, sort of a backwards charity). The natural resources extracted continent wide are some of the most valuable in the world. Take a quick look at the mining operations in the background of many African conflicts and you will see the European fingerprint. This is true from the West, Central Africa all the way down to South Africa. Most European gold, platinum, diamond, cobalt, nickle, boxite, manganese, uranium, copper etc wealth is extracted from these countries at extremely low prices or even free due to the financial colonization activity I mentioned earlier through central banks and other means. Keeping Africa poor and underdeveloped is the only way to create a price ceiling on these valuable resources. This is why the underdevelopment of African countries was a western priority for so many decades. So much so, that the 2nd UN secretary general was assassinated over this specific issue. >https://www.history.com/news/dag-hammarskjold-death-plane-crash https://www.history.com/news/dag-hammarskjold-death-plane-cr... This is also why China has suddenly become an enemy in Western media and among the western ruling class. They are violating this economic requirement that provides welfare to Western economies. Their accelerating activity over the last 10-20 years gives Africans direct access to international markets and routes around predatory European nations...this allows actual free market price discovery to occur (aka the core of capitalism). I understand why many western commoners would want to deny this problematic history but the ruling and international banking class is very aware of these facts. They know where their bread is buttered.