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/
Author Archives: TUDOR LUNGU
Blog Entry for 9/12/2022
For the second part of the class, Dr. Shaya lectured on “Europe and the World.” We started off this lecture with the sad news of the passing of Queen Elizabeth. We discussed how she stood for the stability of the country throughout the world wars and the following crises. We then moved into learning about the timeline of the United Kingdom which really showed a huge growth and then a decrease in its status as it started by being a set of kingdoms in the islands of Western Europe, to reach its peak as an Empire between 1910 and 1930 by controlling 25% of the world land and 25% of the world’s population to their gradual fall as an Empire after the 1930s. One of the reasons for this fall was the quick decolonization starting with India and Pakistan in 1947, then Ghana in 1957, and lastly Kenya in 1960, after an 8-year rebellion being fought.
At the end of the class, we talked about a couple of takeaways to keep in mind after today’s class. One of those was the difference between Eastern and Western Europe, especially in their political aspects post World War era. Also, we talked about how Europe represents a World Power, especially with the formation of the European Union. Moreover, we mentioned the Welfare State and the US’s help in founding the Welfare of Europe.