Well I mean... I sure hope not. I personally don't see any reason to think it's anything other than China trying to gain support from nations that are on the fence or don't care about them, which to be clear is not a bad thing. They're free to pursue any relations they desire, and the other nations are free to do the same. Hopefully the politicians involved are truly working for the betterment of both countries.

That said, the person making the shady deal would clearly say "it's not a shady deal", and the person duped by aforementioned shady deal would obviously not want to admit being duped by said shady deal. So everyone involved has every reason to say this anyway.

In other words: a lot of words to ultimately say nothing. Much like this comment.

[–] TheOubliette@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

China's interest is in "win-win" deals, only one aspect of which is building good will. What they are investing in is infrastructure, things that other countries can build on to become more developed and secure trading partners. A country needs a (better) port to send and receive goods from China, or from a constellation if countries not attempting to isolate China and thus extend their Imperialist regimes. It's not charity but it is a fantastically better way of doing things than the usual alternative of neoliberal loan terms. It results in actual ports, rail lines, power plants, etc.

[–] TraitorToAmerica@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I think the port (and even just railways) argument is a little poor, imperialists absolutely build big and good ports so they can efficiently extract a country's resources, and use railways to connect the inland mines and what not to the ports. Basically, both China and the west have built railways in the global south, but the real difference comes from when you look at a map of the railways built: the west has always built railways nearly exclusively from inland at the locations of mining towns and towns located near other valuable resources to heighten the efficiency of their resource extraction but China builds railroads from inland city to inland city and from port to port, making internal economic development easier and easier for the country.

[–] TheOubliette@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 months ago

Yes, absolutely. Full agreement.

I have the same sentiment but here it is in my own terms. Ports are a tool of trade and can be used in favor of imperialists or against them or at least in a way that creates more independence. I do think there is a qualitative difference in associated development and loan terms here, though. Loans for ports foisted by Imperialists come with conditions that more or less convert an entire country's economy into an extraction economy with unequal exchange, e.g. petrostates, mining states, cheap exploited labor states. With China it is just the port with decent loan terms. And as you mention, associated development lines up with building productive forces within the country rather than subordinating all of production to (neo)colonial extraction.