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How bad is the debt people talk about of African countries incurring with China? (hexbear.net)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I genuinely feel like America bombing the hell out of so many countries in Africa just naturally would endear those countries to anyone except America and their Western vassals, but apparently a lot of twitter users can't seem to comprehend that.

Is whatever debt these countries incur worse than the IMF? Are the consequences anywhere near as bad?

I usually like to start from the position that the leaders of these countries know what they're doing (something Western twitter users don't), so I personally doubt it's anywhere near as bad as people claim, and no matter how bad it is, I don't believe for a moment it could be as bad as the IMF.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It’s important to first understand how the west lends to Africa:

Michael Hudson discusses the IMF and World Bank: Partners in Backwardness

Then understand that Chinese loans are nothing like that. Lower interest rates relative to the west. Invested in activities that develop the productive forces. And Chinese don’t make demands about increasing taxes, cutting social spending, or forcing public assets to be privatized.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago

Ah, thanks (I'm also grateful to the other two posters but I'm a bit dim to understand the charts the first reply). China staying out of internal politics (as frankly any nation should; the heck are lending countries doing trying to interfere with another country's choices?) is grand, and I'm deeply disgusted at how successful the propaganda has been about it.

I'll check the link soon, but the stuff you've said has been hugely informative, thank you.