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This is what I thought the belt-and-road was for. Pretend loans, that are actually payments to buy influence. But no, apparently the Chinese actually ask for their money back, and do so much more insistently than the IMF etc.
I'm particularly familiar with Sri Lanka. That stuff you might have heard of about the place failng organic farming was BS. That nonsense was government copium because they couldn't buy fertilizer, because they ran out of dollars, because the Chinese had lost patience.
The result was that China's friends in power got literally run out of town while protesters jumped into the presidential swimming pool. The new president is nobody's friend, but is now going cap in hand to the IMF.
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