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Beware of China’s generous gifts

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andy

Beware of China’s generous gifts 

 

Publication date 05 September 2018 | 10:39 ICT

 

Philippine daily Inquirer/ANN: The philippines could learn a thing or two from ancient mythology. Beware of Greeks bearing gifts,” the priest Laocoon told the people of Troy in Virgil’s “The Aeneid.” His warning was, of course, famously ignored, and the citizens of the once-free city fell to the invading Greek army from across the sea, thanks to the equally famous Trojan Horse ruse.

Only this time, the threat from across the sea may come from a country offering billions of dollars’ worth of loans. China’s readiness to lend the Philippines funds appears generous on the surface, and is ostensibly meant to help fund a key campaign promise of the Duterte administration: a P9-trillion infrastructure buildup program that will uplift the economy, provide jobs and put the country at par with its regional neighbors.

However, reports have abounded in recent months about how other debtor nations, many of them less affluent and underdeveloped, have fallen into China’s so-called debt-trap diplomacy. Montenegro, Djibouti, Kyrgyzstan, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Pakistan, the Maldives, Laos and Fiji are but some of the countries that are now in hock to China for billions of dollars.

These countries – and the Philippines, if our policymakers are not careful enough – may go the way of Sri Lanka which, late last year, had to cede control of a strategic port to the Chinese government for 100 years, after failing to keep up with its loan payments.

 

https://www.phnompenhpost.com/opinion/beware-chinas-generous-gifts

 

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dicey eye
5 hours ago, andy said:

Beware of Greeks bearing gifts,

Appropriate metaphor

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Oz Jon

In the 19th century, the Brits became a great colonial power with naval and army guns.

In the 21st century, the Chinese are doing it more subtly with debt.

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John_Galt

Don't borrow more than you can pay back? What is wrong with being fiscally conservative? 

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andy
9 hours ago, John_Galt said:

fiscally conservative

 

  Country leaders delegating on their countries and countrymen. Its a new chapter in the history books whatever the end result. socially liberal.

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