There is ample evidence that China uses ‘‘debt trap diplomacy’’ to exploit Africa’s natural resources, dominate infrastructure projects and acquire locations for its military bases, among other things.
Is there any difference to how the IMF and World Bank provide loans and trap countries into debt and force them into economic reforms that are bad for the country? Seems like China is just learning from the best.
As someone from one of the countries trapped, yes there is.
Taking an IMF loan meant austerity and more concessions to international corporations. Shitty, but it’s on the label.
What the Chinese loan means we will not know for at least a few decades because all of it is classified. All we know that there is massive corruption going around.