ROME, July 23 (Reuters) - Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who will visit the White House on Thursday, said that U.S. President Joe Biden had never challenged her on the issue of Rome being part of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Meloni leads the only major Western country to have joined China’s BRI scheme, which envisions rebuilding the old Silk Road to connect China with Asia, Europe and beyond with large infrastructure spending.
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The deal was signed in 2019 under the administration of Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, drawing criticism from Washington and Brussels, and Italy is highly unlikely to renew it when it expires early next year.
It has produced little benefit for Italy over the past four years, with exports to China totalling 16.4 billion euros ($18.1 billion) last year from 13 billion euros in 2019.
That sounds amazing to me. China has done jack shit except practice wolf imperialism.
Meloni leads the only major Western country to have joined China’s BRI scheme, which envisions rebuilding the old Silk Road to connect China with Asia, Europe and beyond with large infrastructure spending.
This sounds amazing to me. China has done some great strides building up their infrastructure, it’s truly astonishing.
Why exactly is this criticised?
The Western critique of the BRI is that it’s debt trap diplomacy, i.e. China loans money for development and hopes the beneficiaries can’t repay so they can “own” them in a diplomatic sense, or downright repo some of their critical assets.
That’s the criticism that Trump has levied against the BRI, but there are serious objections to this portrayal. Here’s one from a reputable Western source:
https://www.chathamhouse.org/2020/08/debunking-myth-debt-trap-diplomacy
Thanks for this link! I read the bullet points ('cuz it’s really late right now) but I’m keen on watching the video tomorrow!
It’s difficult for me to take anything Trump, and by extension, the U.S. says too seriously. They love to fearmonger about foreign influences and propaganda, but it’s not like they don’t do the very same they accuse others of.
Specifically, the GOP fearmongers most. The Dems are much more internationally & diplomatically inclined when compared to their political opponents.
Tinfoil Hat Time: I think the separatism in the US is being stoked by outside forces. If you read a summary of The Foundations of Geopolitics it sounds very familiar to what’s happening. I also think Social Media needs to go, or rather engagement driven algorithms, because they create informational bubbles that polarize society.
Thank you. It is absolutely being stoked by outside forces, very often on social media.
Random interns are using ChatGPT to excel in their jobs, no doubt the CCP and Kremlin have their own LLMs on social media dividing democratic countries.
One of the big downsides of free, anonymous speech.
They do the same, perhaps. But if the truth comes out in the States it’s a scandal.
If it comes out in China it’s a massacre.
Does it matter if it’s a scandal or not when there are no repercussions? Are there not still concentration camps along the southern border? A plan that openly boasted about sexually assaulting people was elected president, and is still not in prison.
China has done some heinous things, but let’s not pretend that the US hasn’t. Even for historical events that are being taught (like the trail of tears) the context is removed. Some things, like the Tulsa massacre aren’t mentioned at all. It’s said that slavery ended with the civil war, yet the last slave was freed in 1942 because the government at the time knew that their treatment of black people would be used as a point of entry for anti-American propaganda.
They have repeatedly intervened in foreign governments and even executed coups to overthrow governments. Like the 1953 coup to overthrow the democratically elected prime minister of Iran because he wanted to nationalise their oil industry.
As for social issues, women aren’t guaranteed access to abortion since the overthrowing of Roe v Wade the other year. Trans people don’t have access to life saving healthcare in most states. Prisoners are essentially stripped of human rights and forced into peonage, most prisoners also strangely being minorities/people of colour.
The United States aren’t good guys. If I have to tolerate their antics, which by and large happen to set the tone for politics here in Europe, then I can tolerate China as well.
Lol, going to need a source on that 1942 claim.
A Reputable source.
Oh absolutely. Here’s an archive.gov page on Classification 50 which is needed for context.
Unfortunately, it seems that the related documents aren’t filed online yet, it is mirrored on this wiki, and there are sources in the description. If you’re in the U.S. I’m sure you could head to a library and request this memo in person if you doubt its veracity.
In the United States one cannot sell himself as a peon or slave – the law is fixed and established to protect the weak-minded, the poor, the miserable. Men will sometimes sell themselves for a meal of victuals or contract with another who acts as surety on his [sic] bond to work out the amount of the bond upon his [sic] release from jail. Any such contract is positively null and void and the procuring and causing of such contract to be made violates these statutes.
…
To assure emphasis on the issue of involuntary servitude and slavery in considering these cases on the one hand and to minimize the necessity of relying upon the element of debt to fix jurisdiction on the other, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been requested to change the title on its reports from “Peonage” to read “Involuntary Servitude and Slavery.” Henceforth, Peonage will be considered as secondary to involuntary servitude and slavery investigations.In short, quote from the archive.gov page
U.S. Attorneys were instructed to disregard entirely the element of debt and to depend upon the issue of involuntary servitude and slavery.
This was done to end the convict leasing debt peonage system that used black codes, laws that specifically targeted black people. When a black person was caught doing heinous acts like playing dice, drinking alcohol, or talking too loudly near a white woman, they’d be arrested, tried, and convicted.
This was after the civil war, meaning that while the legal status of being a slave had been abolished, chattel slavery was not. You could buy the labour of a convict. So if you create laws that specifically target black people, and convict people en masse, you end up with slavery. That is what FDR’s government recognised, hence Circular no 3591 was put in place to end it, because they were worried that the enemy would use this in a propaganda war against them.
Here is a page from the Brownsville Herald (Texas) from October 2nd, 1942.
Beeville Couple arraigned On Charge Of Holding Negro In Slavery On Farm
HOUSTON - A. L. Skrobarcek, 62-year-old farmer, and Susie, his 29-year-old daughter were arraigned today on a complaint charging that they held Alfred Irving, 42, a negro farm hand in slavery. Ray J. Abbaticchio, special agent in charge of the FBI here, said the two were arrested at their isolated farm near Beeville by sheriff’s deputies, state highway patromen and FBI agents.There’s also Mae Louise Miller who purports that she and her family were held in peonage (read: slavery) until they were freed in 1961. That’s her personal account though, so take that as you will.
I wonder why then, if it’s a debt trap, China has such a better record of forgiving foreign loans than other countries and institutions? The IMF requires economic control for their loans, including such stipulations as the privatization of public infrastructure, dismantling of labor laws, and lowering of minimum wages in their loans on a regular basis. I’ve not heard of any such requirements from Chinese loans, and in fact billions of dollars of loans were forgiven during the Covid-19 crisis. Why is there no criticism of the IMF loan regime and its fundamentally exploitative loans? The whole criticism reeks of orientalist hysteria to me.
Forgiving loans is soft power. That’s the simple answer.
It’s all a way for the CCP to gain power over other countries. “Oh, you’re using OUR infrastructure, you need to do X thing that’s bad for you or we will turn it off/fuck you over with it”.
The CCP cannot be trusted.
Too bad the tankies here refuse to hear a single bad word about the CCP, with some even making this sound like ‘Trumptard fear-mongering’.
In reality, the BRI has shaped up to be little more than debt-trap diplomacy, powered by bribes to influential politicians (borderline autocrats) who’re willing to sell their countries for a dime.
I actually believe that those countries decided to take Chinese loans after becoming weary of IMF ones. The latter come with a lot of strings attached that force said countr8toalign with wester ideals and economic doctrines such as privatization of industries and services as well as social reforms. It is actually not too far off from how colonisers would push the colonies to become ‘civilized’. The west as always thinks it knows better and must push the ‘uneducated’ countries in the right direction. The Chinese offered an alternative where the loan recipients are allowed to develop the way they see fits them best. They are not looking to mold new countries in their image, just create economically strong trading partners that may see them more positively that they see the west. In the future that may allow them to contrast the western countries in geopolitical strength. TL;DR: China is actually hoping that these countries develop into strong economies that are aligned with China rather than with the USA.
That’s some mighty fine whitewashing of the BRI. Thing is though, we’ve already seen the carnage left in the wake of China’s debt trap diplomacy, so nobody’s buying it.
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I follow African local politics rather closely and have many friends on the continent, and I’ve yet to see any Africans say that Chinese loans carry such requirements. However, nearly every African country has commented on the exploitative nature of WorldBank and IMF loans, which often come with policy requirements, such as privatization of public infrastructure and restriction on wages.
I did see an airport that was supposedly taken over in Uganda by China, but there’s been no corroborating evidence, despite almost two years having passed since the story was broken, and in fact, the president of Uganda came out and said that at the time the story broke, Uganda hadn’t even left the grace period on their loan, much less defaulted on it.
Why would they spell out that sort of requirement? You are assuming they are operating in the open, in good faith.
They have a history of doing this sort of thing.
I don’t think the IMF or anybody should be screwing over borrowers but at least it’s in the open where you and I, the concerned public, can do something.
Why would Africans spell out that requirement? Because they’re the ones who are taking the loans, and so have the best understanding of the terms of said loans. I didn’t ask why China isn’t talking about this, I said that I’ve yet to see any African people or politicians, despite being heavily invested in African politics, and having many friends on the continent, say anything negative about the Chinese loans. Can you show me some Africans taking about this, or do you only have US media and state dept links?
Also, what do you mean the concerned public can do something about the IMF? What effective methods do you know of to prevent IMF exploitative loans that can be done by the regular public?
There’s no such thing as a perfect government, and there’s certainly things the CCP does that I’m not a fan of. That said, China’s overall rising standard of living, and incredible infrastructure that’s all popped up in the past couple of decades has me really impressed. Attempting an international infrastructure project like this is super interesting, to me at least.
Yeah. China suddenly owns a bunch of African ports and other infrastructure because they overloaded countries with debt.
