Who does Africa better, China or the U.S.?

[UnseenParticipant]

Yanis Varoufakis is a renowned economist and former Finance Minister of Greece (during their economic crisis).

Here, he addresses a woman who obviously gets most of her information and worldly beliefs from CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, The NY Times, The Washington Post, and the rest of the mainstream media. She thinks China making friends with African countries by building them infrastructure is bad. I suppose the implication is that America’s approach of building dozens of military bases and financing terrorists plots to overthrow governments is the better one.

Varoufakis makes clear that he has problems with China, but more about their internal politics than their conduct internationally. He thinks China is a better world citizen than the U.S. is, and I think I agree.

[RichRaelianParticipant]

China!

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Unseen,

The one who does Africa better will be from Africa itself and informed and inspired by what has benefited others.

It will be the plantain and palm oil merchant who makes massive bumper crops with the help of Normal Borlaug’s techniques of Green Revolution.

It will be the Aqua-Engineer who desalinates and sterilizes water on the coasts and sends it both to the Sahara and to jungles whose swamps are infected with deadly pathogens.

It will be the IT and Mecha-Electronics professional who makes satellite-based Internet ubiquitous and ships products by air and ground drones to the most untouched regions of the Continent.

It will be the evidence-based Medical Doctor and Pharmacist who fights Woo and Witch-Doctory and helps patients with Viagra and Metformin rather than ground-up rhino bones and the flesh of hunted unlucky humans born with Albinism. (Hoo! Some “White Privilege!”)

Finally, it will be the African leader who learns from the mistakes of his predecessors, who reads up on Frederick Bastiat and Lao Tzu alike, who knows “What Is Seen And What Is Not Seen” about policy, uses a light, limited touch, and “lets The Ten Thousand Things do themselves.”

In other words, it will be many Individuals doing what they do best that will do Africa the best.

Can’t think of a better way to love the Mama Continent. 👍

[_Robert_Participant]

China could not be imperialistic if it wanted to before the West allied with it to defeat Japan. Walled-in against invaders and suffering routine mass starvations. Thus the 1-child rule and their present inverted age-pyramid.

China was used and abused for centuries by many nations. Now that it has gained wealth and status by providing cheap labour, let’s see what a good world citizen they will be. It’s not like they care about international patents or copyrights, the environment, or their indigenous peoples.

Enco is on to it, however. Let Africa be Africa.

[UnseenParticipant]

@robert

You totally avoided my question. If you want to make friends, is it better to give them a helping hand or to play the role of the militaristic colonialist?

The world has plenty of grievances against the U.S., many of which are more serious than not respecting intellectual property rights.

• This reply was modified 1 month, 3 weeks ago by  Unseen.

[_Robert_Participant]

Unseen wrote:

@robert You totally avoided my question. If you want to make friends, is it better to give them a helping hand or to play the role of the militaristic colonialist?

They don’t need help from anyone. I’d bet China is just gonna go in, talk a bunch of shit while behind the scenes it’ll be draining resources and creating warlords and fuck them up just like Europeans and Americans do.

[UnseenParticipant]

@Enco

You simply avoided the question in what’s called an “end run.” The answer is that, whatever China’s faults, they are the ones who will end up with friendships in Africa. America’s militaristic approach will ultimately be doomed.

[_Robert_Participant]

China is ruled by a man-god plus a few others who are in power for life. Such weird things happen.

[UnseenParticipant]

@robert

Yes, internally China has issues, but they haven’t prevented it from becoming the fastest growing economy in history and they are homing in on eventually being the world’s #1 military power as well with destroyers which are rated as more powerful than ours and hypersonic missiles which are making our aircraft carriers with their ability to project air power obsolete. Still, the record is that, militarily, they stay home. Yes, they took over/back Tibet (to the benefit of the Tibetans, I might add) and they want to reclaim, as they would put it, Taiwan, but they have historical claims to those lands. For us, “might is right” and we’ve never needed an historical claim to take control of territory.

They don’t have bases across the border in Canada or Mexico. Not even in the Caribbean. They don’t conduct naval maneuvers in our maritime neighborhood. However, when it comes to winning friends and influencing people in Africa, building ports and roads and other infrastructure would seem to be a better long-term strategy. PLUS, it’s cheaper than building bases all over the continent and spending money on “rebels” to overthrow governments.

Or do you think our strategy is better for winning hearts and minds in Africa? Should we even care about hearts and minds when we can just heave our weight around?

[_Robert_Participant]

With our current government overrun with obstructionists, we can’t even update our own infrastructure, let alone Africa’s, LOL. With 4-year terms limits, I wouldn’t say the US really has a detailed real long-term strategy in Africa except to generally protect commerce, promote other democracies, thwart the growth and threat of repressive dictators and to help out during disasters.

Why do you insist anyone has to win the “hearts and minds” of Africa? The US government should not be “nation building”. As unpopular as the US supposedly is, those countries with bases welcomed them to ensure their security from the likes of dictatorships such as Iran, Russia, China, etc.

Japan, Taiwan and South Korea don’t feel the warmth that you seem to believe China brings. Crazy how tiny Taiwan is such a big part of China’s overall economy, huh?

If you think Russia is struggling with the invasion of Ukraine, wait till China invades Taiwan from the sea. I believe that they may invade at some point as China’s house-of-cards economy unravels. But human life means nothing to dictatorships, so that cost won’t matter. It’s not clear how the West will respond. China would not stand a chance trying an invasion from the sea against united forces of the US, Japan, Taiwan, S, Korea, and Australia. What would be the point of bombing and destroying the island? Maybe the US will just provide arms, IDK.

If (when) Putin goes down, I would not be surprised if China takes back Outer Manchuria (an area of more than 1 million km2) and regains direct access to the Sea of Japan. China is feeling ‘cock blocked’ in its port geography by Taiwan, Japan, and S. Korea all sitting right there. Japan is worried and changing its defense stance.

https://www.brinknews.com/the-revolution-occurring-in-japans-defense-posture/

 

[UnseenParticipant]

@robert

You’re pulling the old “answering a question with a question” trick, followed by a rambling smatter of disparate personal opinions and prognostications.

Africa has rich resources, so one can either bargain with them by providing something they can use in exchange for future consideration based on good relations and friendship, or you can roll in with the troops and the covert actions in the interest of taking ownership of them away from African hands (aka economic colonialism). China is doing it the right way, if you ask me.

The world hates America for the way we do business.

The world’s nations not part of the tail on America’s dog are lining up against us.

BRICS Group to Outpace G7’s Growth, Reach 35 percent of Global Economy by 2028

Maybe that’s behind The Fed’s rush toward a digital currency(?).

• This reply was modified 1 month, 3 weeks ago by  Unseen.

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