We Don't Have to Trade With China

Why do we?:

The Holy See Press Office noted the arrest of Cardinal Zen with “extreme attention.” The secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, pronounced himself “displeased” but was grateful that Cardinal Zen was “treated well” and hoped that the displeasing event did not disrupt the Vatican’s ongoing “dialogue” with China. 

 

If I may echo the sentiments of Saint John Paul II, you cannot ever deal with the communists.

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Sri Lanka since the end of March has been wracked by violent protests. "Shoot-on-sight" orders have for the most part restored order, but the unrest has led to the replacement of Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, once the country's dominate political figure. His brother, the president, is unlikely to survive the tumult. The ongoing economic and financial crisis is Sri Lanka's worst since independence from Britain in 1948.

Sri Lanka is only the world's opening act. Disturbances there constitute the first in a series of crises about to engulf vulnerable countries, perhaps even large ones. The war in Ukraine, aggravating underlying problems in Sri Lanka and elsewhere, is shaking just about every corner of the planet.

Events in Sri Lanka also highlight how China is going about dominating the world. Beijing is corrupting national leaders, drowning them in debt, and ultimately destabilizing their governments. Beijing, it appears, is particularly targeting democracies. ...

Sri Lanka also faces another difficulty: China. The dominant Rajapaksa clan, long thought to be in Beijing's pocket, borrowed heavily from Chinese sources for misconceived ventures. Many of the "white-elephant projects" are in the Hambantota district, the home of the Rajapaksas.

The Hambantota port, losing $300 million in six years, was ill-conceived from the beginning. Port operators, therefore, were unable to service $1.4 billion in loans from China. Close to the port is a rarely used $15.5 million conference center. Thanks to a $200 million loan from China, Sri Lanka was able to build the nearby Rajapaksa Airport, which could not pay even its electricity bills.

In Colombo, there is Sri Lanka's answer to Dubai: the Chinese-funded Port City, an island of 665 acres of landfill and a "hidden debt trap." In that city is also the never-opened-to-the-public Lotus Tower, also funded by China. "What is the point of being proud of this tower if we are left begging for food?" asked Krishantha Kulatunga, the owner of a small stationery store near the landmark. "We are neck-deep in loans already."

China extended around 17% of the country's total debt. Very few know the full extent of the indebtedness to Chinese parties because there are hard-to-track loans to Sri Lanka's state firms and to the country's central bank.

Whatever their amount, Chinese loans have broken Sri Lanka. In April, it declared a suspension of repayment of foreign debt. The BBC reports that the suspension, the first default since independence, is "largely because it cannot service loans from China that paid for massive infrastructure projects."

China is the world's predatory lender, something evident from its Belt and Road Initiative, also known as BRI. Beijing's grand infrastructure project specializes in roads, ports, and railroads that have, like the Sri Lankan projects, little or no commercial justification. So far, 146 countries have signed BRI memo agreements with Beijing. Some of them find themselves in hock to the Chinese.

The Chinese have established a pattern. "China extends debt on onerous terms, backs up authoritarian governments when there are financial collapses or civil disobedience, and then takes everything it can find," Cleo Paskal of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies told Gatestone.

Yeah, I'll believe it when I see it, too:

As of this week, nothing has changed. Mendicino and Champagne cleaved to the policy assiduously on Thursday. In the 1,191-word statement and policy announcement Champagne issued, China isn’t mentioned once. This required some fancy wordplay: “The Government of Canada has serious concerns about suppliers such as Huawei and ZTE who could be compelled to comply with extrajudicial directions from foreign governments in ways that would conflict with Canadian laws or would be detrimental to Canadian interests.”

 

Yeah, I wouldn't go down there if I were you:

A huge sinkhole, 192 metres deep, that is home to an ancient forest along has been discovered in China’s Leye county, according to reports from Xinhua news.

The sinkhole reportedly measures 306 meters long, and 150 meters wide. When explorers ventured to the bottom of the sinkhole, they found three large caves in the walls, and an ancient forest with vegetation measuring up to 40 meters tall.

One of the explorers on the team that discovered the sinkhole, Chen Lixin, told Xinhua he “wouldn’t be surprised to know that there are species found in these caves that have never been reported or described by science until now.”