For years now we have been seeing China's transformation from a major Asian power to a global power. China has been modernizing its armed forces and has been working on policies which have made it a major threat for India as well as other countries. As China grew its aggression has also grown quite a bit as we see it claiming new parts of lands and sea's near its borders, China has disputes with not just India but with nearly all neighbouring states as well. From land border disputes with India on Aksai Chin and China claiming parts of North-East Indian states like A.P to its Sea border disputes with various countries like Philippines Vietnam etc and the issues in South China Sea, China is in border disputes at all sides.
These kind of issues can lead to strains and possible war like situations like they did in 1962 & 1967 (it is not discussed as Sino-China war of 1962 maybe because India won this one, thanks to presstitutes) and so such topics like "THE MOST FEARED WEAPON" or "TRUMP CARD" etc are a hot topic.
In this post I will tell about what I feel is THE MOST DANGEROUS CHINESE WEAPON.
The most dangerous weapon of China is not a Nuclear submarine or a jet or even some Nuclear missile but in my opinion it is Chinese CHEQUE BOOK.
Now this is not a very relatable thing as far as only weapon based bloggers are concerned as most defence blogs and even a large chunk of blogger community does not consider economical factors and politics & are mostly concerned about weapons and only compare the various weapons, but in the today's world diplomacy and political wars are most effective. Wars are fought not just on borders by soldiers and generals but today wars are fought diplomatically by policy makers round the globe.
So what is this CHEQUE BOOK DIPLOMACY and why do I say it is so dangerous?
Well all nations round the globe need money and funds for running government and for development of facilities and infrastructure, this is especially true in case of poor nations who have shortage of funds for development. The WORLD BANK offers loans to these nations at rates varying from 1.5-5 % (generally) depending on various criterias such as their debt and economy and various projects are funded via this, at times countries which are in debt or have bad economy or the project shows no returns or for any other reason the world bank refuses to fund the projects, this is where China and its big cheque book comes into play.
China offers huge amounts of money to such nations as loans, now its not a new thing for a big state to give a friendly state loans but what's different in this scenario is the rate of interest which is charged. While other friendly nations such as India gives soft loans at mere rates of 1% or at times even lesser which is amongst the lowest rates, China on opposite side gives loans at rate of 8-12 % and at times with hidden conditions which make it worse, the Chinese call them soft loans at rates of 2-3 % or concession loans but the additional conditions attached to it make the real calculated interest rates very high.
What happens next is the nation is unable to repay the money it owes to China and this way the nation becomes an economic slave of Chinese Govt. The host nations government has to surrender its resources and infrastructure to Chinese government which then starts eating the nation from within and make it hollow. Not only resources but also the host nations diplomatic policies are then influenced by Chinese government.
So this is why I consider the Chinese Cheque book its most effective weapon as it can not just destabilise & enslave an entire nation easily
but it paves way for next target which can be the neighbour of the state. Chinese govt can use the host nations puppet government as a proxy and wage political and diplomatic wars against other nations.
In next part of this post I will give examples of nations where China has effectively used this debt trap policy and gained control of the important strategic locations.
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Actually, USA is more or less doing exactly the same thing but you add some usury/loan shark principle to the equation.
ReplyDeleteNow China is simply destroying rain-forest in Gabon, thanks to such method.
Most of countries that dealt with China in Africa end being not pretty happy from this even if thing didn't went as far. Several, after having given a try at dealing with Russia then China and even USA ended doing as they were used for long : calling the 'Quai d'Orsay' (French foreign affairs).
Russian took over the ageing former Pechiney factory in Guinea (only aluminium facility in Africa), still doesn't work after several years. Chinese got several building contracts and to create a factory, they hired not a single local for building, moving Chinese workers there while working conditions are deemed MUCH worst than colonialism in the factory.
Result : although Guinea severed ties with France due to the fact Seku-Touré was strongly aligned with the Soviets, Alpha Condé now much prefers dealing with the French : at least systems work well, jobs and even peripheral facilities are created, employees are not treated like slaves, for sure companies make money but deals are not a rip-off. Even South-African companies really sucks i.e. diamond/gold mines only reverse 0.45% of their benefits in local dev : I know of a 125k city which extracts billions in diamonds each year, where there is still no water supply, no electricity, the only 100km road to go there is a dirt one, streets are also made of dirt, thus, they paid for a primary school and the bridge to the airport which they made its 1200m runway one of the only 5 hard runways in the country. Strangely, on 5, one is the capital city international airport (which radar's out of use since 2010) and 4 others all are where diamond/gold mining companies have serious mines... To my knowledge, none has customs. Be sure that you have serious exports made without the govt getting a single $ while companies armed guards may likely imply themselves in criminal activities to get correct 'salaries' with the help of corrupted militaries/cops...
Actually, many of the poorest countries on Earth are in such state due to bribes/corruption practises that are the rule from the top to the bottom.
Seems China still hasn't used such practise to wage proxy wars but surely, it's a possible thing but they're far to be the only ones and some others actually launched such kind of proxy wars and even managed to put sectarian dictatorship in place or use sectarian militias (mostly linked to al-Qaeda with despicable practises not really human rights oriented) : Qatar, Saudi-Arabia (with serious US/UK help) are perfect examples. Usually, you end with the Muslim Brotherhood (from which al-Qaeda's nothing else than an offshoot) ruling and leading the proxy war on the neighbour as a jihad.
Who win the war in 1967 India or China???
ReplyDeleteAh good eyes, that's why I mentioned that very little known war ( called conflict by China). In 1967 we were victorious and defeated the Chinese forces forcing them to withdraw. Also we suffered 5 folds lesser casualties than Chinese forces. This war is very less known to Indian public and for Chinese why will they remember their defeat.
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