[imiric]

The scariest thing about China's geopolitics is that it has embedded itself in pretty much every country on the planet. Whether that is by financing major infrastructure projects, being the world's largest creditor (beyond the World Bank and the IMF), or having hundreds of police stations around the world. This gives it immense leverage to influence governments to act in their favor.

This is not even accounting for the propaganda machinery spamming the internet, or their role as the world's factory.

While the US has been overthrowing governments and replacing them with puppets, China has been diplomatically and methodically setting up the chess board to be in a winning position in the long run. This makes them a far scarier adversary than the West with its military superiority.

[ProjectArcturis]

It has certainly been their intent to buy influence by throwing money around the world. I'm not sure how effective it will be. If there is an invasion of Taiwan, the Western financial powers will give the rest of the world permission to default on their debts and renege on their deals with China (just as we "froze" $300B of Russia's that was in Western banking systems, which we'll probably give to Ukraine for reconstruction).

It remains to be seen whether African countries will prefer to continue paying their debts to China or join the Western side and take all that infrastructure for free.

[wahern]

China's infrastructure investments are to a significant extent work programs for Chinese laborers, whom they send overseas to build these projects rather than employ local labor. The preference for Chinese laborers doesn't play well in countries where they "invest", which diminishes the political value even more. Unsurprisingly, China ends up cancelling much of this financing debt.

> Chinese interest-free loans are frequently cancelled. And it’s widely understood that when China extends such credit lines, they are rarely ever paid back in full. Beijing was certainly not counting on the likes of Burundi, Congo or Mozambique to service these debts. And it has regularly rescheduled loans to African sovereigns worth billions in the last 20 years.

https://africanarguments.org/2022/09/will-china-africa-debt-...