As far as I'm aware, China has been giving loans to various countries in Africa and building infrastructure in exchange for money and maybe some stuff like recognizing Taiwan as part of China. But why do people say China is imperialist for doing this? Is there truth to it or is it another strain of radlibs eating state department propaganda?

  • emizeko [they/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Yanis Varoufakis explains how this respect and solidarity for expanding “progressive forces” works out in practice:

    When I was Minister of Finance I had a very interesting experience with COSCO, one of the Chinese national companies that in the end bought the Port of Piraeus.

    When I moved into the Ministry I found the contract from the previous government, that had already sold the Port of Piraeus for a pittance and other ridiculous conditions to the Chinese, under the guidance of course of the European International Monetary Fund. In other words, as a minister, I was bound to a particular deal that was terrible for Greece. And I went to the Chinese, and discussed it with them, and I was really astonished.

    I said to them: Look, you’re paying too little, you’re not committing to a sufficient level of investment, and you are treating our workers as fodder. You’re effectively subcontracting labor to horrible companies that exploit the workers, and I can’t deal with this effectively. I proposed to them we to renegotiate the contract. So instead of getting 67% of the shares of the port, they would get — with the same price — 51%. The remaining shares would go into the Greek pension fund system, in order to bolster the capitalization of the public pensions. Secondly, I want you to commit to 180 million euros of investment within 12 months. And thirdly, proper collective bargaining with the trade unions and no subcontracting of labor. And to my astonishment, this is okay!

    Can you imagine if that was a German company, or an American company? That’s what I’m saying.

    This is not an isolated anecdote. London School of Economics research concludes an Ethopian case study with the discovery that “Chinese Investment In Africa Has Had ‘Significant And Persistently Positive’ Long-Term Effects Despite Controversy.” Dr. Deborah Brautigam from Johns Hopkins University concurs:

    The Chinese ‘Debt Trap’ is a myth. The narrative wrongfully portrays both Beijing and the developing countries it deals with. … Our research shows that Chinese banks are willing to restructure the terms of existing loans and have never actually seized an asset from any country, much less the port of Hambantota. A Chinese company’s acquisition of a majority stake in the port was a cautionary tale, but it’s not the one we’ve often heard. With a new administration in Washington, the truth about the widely, perhaps willfully, misunderstood case of Hambantota Port is long overdue.

    Why can’t capitalists replicate these strategies, even cynically, in pursuit of long-term profit? As per Lenin, “the degree of concentration which has been reached forces [capitalists] to adopt [imperialism] in order to obtain profits.” These strategies are only available to China because the CPC — China’s sovereign, the political authority — is able to check the power of capital.

    from https://redsails.org/china-has-billionaires/