161
Poorest 75 nations face ‘tidal wave’ of debt repayments to China in 2025, study warns
(www.theguardian.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 27 May 2025
161 points (96.0% liked)
News
29646 readers
2770 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
This really isn't different than the IMF, except I imagine China isn't going to be leveraging their debt to convince poor countries to wage economic warfare against its poorest citizens and do massive giveaways to the foreign and domestic wealthy.
Fuck the IMF, all my homies hate the IMF.
Oh I'm suuuure China has no ulterior motives... good guys you know
Oh, they certainly do, but their ulterior motives aren't "see if we can grind poor people into cash powder", like the IMF's is.
Don't be naive. If it benefits China, they would be more than happy to grind people to "cash powder".
Surely, but the difference is that China isn't going in with the express intent of creating a debt trap to leverage poor countries to adopt austerity. They're not saints, but it turns out that being 100x better than the IMF is a very low bar, like being more ethical than the CIA.
They are not better than the IMF or more ethical than the CIA. They are most likely far worse.
X
Why?
The American government (I think that's what you are referencing when using the term CIA) has done a lot of very bad things. I don't they've done anything as bad as the concentration camps and cultural genocide in Xinjiang (in the last ~100 years).
IMF can actually be flexible in some situations and there is measure of accountability. Chinese loans are managed by the CCP; an authoritarian criminal group.
I would like to suggest that you read the Jakarta Method. The CIA is directly responsible for multiple reactionary movements around the world, and those efforts very reliably led to mass murder, in some cases at the direct request of the CIA. The OSS, the precursor to the CIA, overthrew Guatemala's government because they had the gall to pay United Fruit what they said their farms were worth in tax filings when they nationalized the farms, and they went ahead and re-instated chattel slavery there, as a treat. Dulles apparently did a jig in his socks he was so happy about it.
Why would China want to force a country to evolve their economy in any way? China is in it for the assets they get. A perfect example is the Hambantota port in Sri Lanka. China lent their money to Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka spent it unwisely and China accepted a 99 year lease on the newly built port as partial debt repayment. The lease agreement said "no military use" and 3 years ago China docked a military survey ship at that port.
So tell me which is worse: a few years of austerity, or a 99 year loss of your largest and newest port to a foreign nation ?
That doesn't seem uniquely terrible to me, as an American. That's just kind of what empires do, and I doubt I'd have to go very far to find a dozen examples of the US doing something quite similar. And it's not a few years of austerity, the austerity causes long-term disturbances in the well being of the population, and is sometimes never undone. The IMF are some of the biggest bastards on the planet, you'd almost be better off dealing with the devil.
Our discussion is between China lending and the IMF lending, not the USA.
Long term disturbances like losing your port nation's seaport to China for 99 years? Also with the distance possibility it will be a Chinese military base on your own soil without your consent?
Also you're mixing to concepts as equal when they aren't. IMF austerity is an imposed condition for getting a loan. A country considering an IMF loan can choose to not take IMF money and therefore not impose austerity. China is doing worse here where they're allowing bad loans with no conditions, but write into the agreements that China gets national assets when the country defaults. As in, the country doesn't have a choice to forgo the Chinese money and keep their assets that ship (pun intended) has already sailed.
I'm not defending the IMF's actions. They're no angels. However it seems you're answering you'd prefer to deal with China and lose your countries land and national assets.
Now hold on, so if someone agrees to the conditions of the loan for the IMF (austerity), that's just business, but it isn't if they agree to the conditions of the loan from China (99-year lease on a port on default)? Those both sound like Caveat Emptor to me, but only one of them is laser targeted on hurting the most disadvantaged in a country.
With the IMF terms, the negatives are all up-front. As in: you want this money, you will have to have this negative. The China deal is "take the money and spend it on whatever you want. Oh, you're broke now and can't pay us back? Well, we're going to break your legs now for non-payment."
The IMF loan would be the equivalent of having a bank loan with a high interest rate (meaning you have less money to spend on other things). The China deal is getting deferred payment on drugs from your drug dealer. He knows you're not going to be able to pay him back and will extract the value of the drugs in some other worse way. Its predatory lending only apparent on the back end after the choice is removed from you.
Fair enough