How china is exploiting developing countries in this pandemic

How China is exploiting developing countries

China is one of the largest economies and it is now giving aid or actually debt to other developing countries so they can improve their economy like they have given a loan to Sri Lanka to develop Hambantota port (one of the biggest port in Sri Lanka) Due to Sri Lanka’s inability to service the debt on the port, it was leased to the Chinese state-owned China Merchants Port Holdings Company Limited on a 99-year lease in 2017.

How china is using Dept trap diplomacy?

Debt trap diplomacy is diplomacy based on debt carried out in the bilateral relations between countries with an often alleged negative intent. Mainly it means when china gives other countries loan and when they were not able to pay back the loan then Chinese government take any land of the country on a lease or pressurize the government to follow their orders like Pakistan.

This debt trap diplomacy is often used in history by many countries to exploit poor countries.

Countries who are exploited by china in dept trap

There are many countries that are in the debt trap of China like Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Indonesia, Nepal, Montorega, Venezualan, Guinea, and countries like Pakistan who are not accepting publically that they are in a debt trap.

Sri Lanka

The loan is given to the Sri Lankan government by the Exim Bank of China to build the Magampura port, Mattala Rajapaksa International airport which is built by China Harbour Engineering Company and Sinohydro Corporation and cost of building it were total US$361 million which was 85% funded by China’s state-owned Export-Import Bank at an annual rate of 6.3 per cent. Due to Sri Lanka’s inability to service the debt on the port, it was leased to the Chinese government companies.

Indonesia

The Suramadu Bridge MW Indramayu West Java 1 power plant was built by a consortium of Indonesian companies working with Chinese companies. China National Electric Equipment Corporation, estimated cost: $870 million.

In April 2018, Indonesia and China signed five contracts worth $23.3 billion contract consists of several infrastructure projects such as a hydropower plant development and a facility to convert coal into dimethyl ether, among other projects and these projects was not revealed to Indonesian locals and they don’t know it was funded by China.

Malaysia

China had financed $22 billion worth of projects in Malaysia during the leadership of former Prime Minister Najib Razak and increased bilateral trade with China.

But in 2018, the then PM Mahathir canceled projects worth approximately $2.795 billion with China Petroleum Pipeline Bureau for oil and gas pipelines, saying Malaysia would not be able to repay the debt. 90% of the cost of several of the pipelines in Borneo from Malacca to Johor had been paid, but only 13% of the construction had been completed. Mohamad further stated that some of the funding from the Exim Bank of China had been misappropriated as part of the scandal. He criticized the project stating that it was expensive, unnecessary, not useful, uncompetitive as open bidding was not allowed, secretive, conducted with no public oversight, and favored Chinese state-owned firms and those affiliated with Najib’s United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) party at inflated prices.

China is also exploiting poor countries in Africa like Nigeria, Zambia, Republic of Congo, and many more by giving them a debt. Which is a concern for many other countries because it can affect geopolitically.

And it can also affect India because the neighbouring countries of India is in this trap and it can affect us in difficult situations.