just NUMBER_TOKEN miles at its closest point to india one of china's closest rivals coincidence maybe but then in NUMBER_TOKEN came what many see as the smoking gun unable to pay back its many multi-million dollar loans sri lanka was forced to hand over the port and NUMBER_TOKEN NUMBER_TOKEN acres around it to china it didn't take a wild imagination to see how the country then already notorious for making illegal claims in the south china sea might use this strategic outpost for more than mere shipping since then close observers have watched the same early warning signs play out around the globe tajikistan djibouti ethiopia kyrgyzstan angola nigeria what could once be dismissed as circumstantial many now argue has become a neo-colonial playbook it's called the debt trap debt trap diplomacy debt truck debt trap diplomacy here's what happens first china approaches a small impoverished nation usually in africa with an offer it can't refuse stadiums palaces roads ports it doesn't really matter what it is between NUMBER_TOKEN and NUMBER_TOKEN chinese banks have loaned an estimated NUMBER_TOKEN billion dollars to african governments alone looking at a map it's hard to find a place on the continent that hasn't taken chinese loans inevitably the project fails trains sit empty airports open without flights roads lead to nowhere and an oil refinery runs at just six percent capacity in fact it almost seems like china wants them to fail finally the coup de grasse after the fanfare has subsided and the recipient country is left right back where it started plus crumbling roads and mountains of debt in swoops china it generously offers to forgive the loans and all it asks for is one thing in return a tiny insignificant piece of its sovereign territory and voila china has a new military base or rather that's how the story goes the dead trap narrative is so often repeated that it's been labeled a meme yet almost everything said thus far is either downright wrong or at least misleading in the case of sri lanka no debt was ever forgiven no sovereignty was ceded to china there is no military base and china didn't approach sri lanka sri lanka approached china there's another way to make sense of china's actions and it neither requires that you assume it's evil nor benevolent sponsored by brilliant learn math science and computer science the intuitive way with the link in the description when poor countries need money wealthy ones through organizations like the development assistance committee have for the last NUMBER_TOKEN years provided it but what these largely western countries and banks will pay for has changed dramatically over time at one point NUMBER_TOKEN percent of world bank financing went toward economic infrastructure physical things like roads water and electricity today just NUMBER_TOKEN percent in favor of things like education democratic elections and family planning but while the west has largely moved on from infrastructure the developing world hasn't africa for instance receives only about half of the NUMBER_TOKEN to NUMBER_TOKEN billion dollars in infrastructure it needs each year leaving it with a massive NUMBER_TOKEN to NUMBER_TOKEN billion dollar gap now hold that thought for a second sometime around NUMBER_TOKEN the world's most populous country had a problem after two decades of breakneck growth and development it began to put it simply running out of things to build china was still developing like crazy but with diminishing returns by NUMBER_TOKEN the profit rate of new domestic infrastructure projects fell below zero meanwhile the entire economy and with it the party's legitimacy depends
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