https://ghostarchive.org/archive/4fZTD?wr=false
ROME, July 23 (Reuters) - Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who will visit the White House on Thursday, said that U.S. President Joe Biden had never challenged her on the issue of Rome being part of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Meloni leads the only major Western country to have joined China’s BRI scheme, which envisions rebuilding the old Silk Road to connect China with Asia, Europe and beyond with large infrastructure spending.
“The president of the United States has never directly raised the question with me,” she told a news conference following an international meeting on migration in Rome.
The deal was signed in 2019 under the administration of Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, drawing criticism from Washington and Brussels, and Italy is highly unlikely to renew it when it expires early next year.
It has produced little benefit for Italy over the past four years, with exports to China totalling 16.4 billion euros ($18.1 billion) last year from 13 billion euros in 2019.
This sounds amazing to me. China has done some great strides building up their infrastructure, it’s truly astonishing.
Why exactly is this criticised?
It’s all a way for the CCP to gain power over other countries. “Oh, you’re using OUR infrastructure, you need to do X thing that’s bad for you or we will turn it off/fuck you over with it”.
The CCP cannot be trusted.
Yeah. China suddenly owns a bunch of African ports and other infrastructure because they overloaded countries with debt.
The Western critique of the BRI is that it’s debt trap diplomacy, i.e. China loans money for development and hopes the beneficiaries can’t repay so they can “own” them in a diplomatic sense, or downright repo some of their critical assets.
That’s the criticism that Trump has levied against the BRI, but there are serious objections to this portrayal. Here’s one from a reputable Western source:
https://www.chathamhouse.org/2020/08/debunking-myth-debt-trap-diplomacy
Thanks for this link! I read the bullet points ('cuz it’s really late right now) but I’m keen on watching the video tomorrow!
It’s difficult for me to take anything Trump, and by extension, the U.S. says too seriously. They love to fearmonger about foreign influences and propaganda, but it’s not like they don’t do the very same they accuse others of.
Specifically, the GOP fearmongers most. The Dems are much more internationally & diplomatically inclined when compared to their political opponents.
Tinfoil Hat Time: I think the separatism in the US is being stoked by outside forces. If you read a summary of The Foundations of Geopolitics it sounds very familiar to what’s happening. I also think Social Media needs to go, or rather engagement driven algorithms, because they create informational bubbles that polarize society.
Thank you. It is absolutely being stoked by outside forces, very often on social media.
Random interns are using ChatGPT to excel in their jobs, no doubt the CCP and Kremlin have their own LLMs on social media dividing democratic countries.
One of the big downsides of free, anonymous speech.