As we talked about Global Capitalism on Monday, I found this article great for informational purposes as it’s related to our topic. The article starts talking about how the Westerners came to find out about an issue that is related to the nations that are in need in need of external financial assistance. China was found to be involved in the “debt trap diplomacy” which basically is explained as a ‘maneuver’ that seems to be beneficiary to the nation that is in need of financial assistance, but it does not end like that. Basically, China provides lots of financial assistance to nations that they might know or assume will not really be able to pay it back. As a result, China is able to secure ‘strategic international assets’ and have control over those nations in a way that will benefit them at some point in the future as China later ‘forgives’ these nations from paying back this loan which would make these nations owe China. As proof, the author brought up the fact that China has forgiven 23 interest-free loans from 17 African countries and restructured or refinanced around $21 billion of debt in Africa from 2000 until 2019. In the article, they give an example of a nation that has fallen into this trap, Sri Lanka. It is said that they have been irresponsibly handling their economy as they owe 81% of their external debt to US and European financial institutions, Japan and India. In the end, the author points out that these intentions of China or other economic powers that land lots of money cannot be 100% terrible intentions.

https://www.fairobserver.com/politics/corruption-debt-and-the-crisis-of-global-capitalism/