It's been argued that if you observe actions and not words, default has always been the point of IMF loans. Have you read Confessions of an Economic Hitman?

If you can't tell Confessions of an Economic Hitman is a work of fiction I don't know what to tell you.

You don't need to read the book to see the role the world bank plays in preserving worldwide power structures. The entire world can talk to each other outside the american media sphere, you know!

I think that generally if you read the internal documents, most of the people behind IMF and other global development loans are operating in good faith and not simply puppets of the political agenda of the west. I think they showed clear overconfidence in their policy prescriptions, but not out of malice

The IMF is by definition the lender of last resort, when banks and investors find a country so fiscally irresponsible that they cannot access reasonable funding. It is not exactly surprising that those kinds of basket case economies also fail when given IMF loans given that people predicted they were going to do that and stopped lending.

> Chinese loanmaking to foreign countries has mostly gone bust, with many loans basically in default.

As America (or the world bank/imf as a proxy for american capital) can attest, calling in these loans is a great way to make a lot of enemies.

The problem in China's case, is that there's a lot of evidence that China doesn't even care whether or not it's paid back. One, the loans were given often in dollars. Which China found itself with a surplus of the past few decades. With no convenient way of ridding themselves of those dollars without significant pain, Chinese strategists hit on the brilliant plan of "loans". Two, and more importantly, the loans were used to finance Chinese influenced infrastructure projects.

So for instance, most of the African loans financed things like ports, and roads, and bridges, and trains, etc. Well when you look at the map of the "where" and the "what", it's easy to see the "why". All these bridges, roads and trains lead to the ports. Sure, this allows African countries to move their resources, and sometimes even finished products manufactured in these nations, to ports for delivery to "international clients". (Read, "China"). But tell me this, will the Africans own the freighters? No. The Africans will move massive amounts of products and resources to their ports, likely in the EAC, then China will pick up all that bounty and move it to China.

Sounds a lot like "harvesting" doesn't it?

There's one case where the Chinese definitely don't care whether the loan is repaid or not. They only care that all the bridges, roads and trains financed by the loan go to the ports. In fact, I don't know if the Africans realize it, but they'll be paying the Chinese more than the value of the loan just by using the rail and roads. The entire infrastructure system they've built only facilitates one thing, moving resources and products to the ports.

Is it good for Africans? Absolutely. A much better deal than they used to get when the West and Russia used assassinations and proxy wars to ravage the place. But let's not pretend it's about helping Africa. It's, at root, about an extremely low risk method of helping China by "loaning" money to others.

roads and bridges to ports are exactly what imf and world bank loan do too, for obvious reasons

frankly this whole comment reads as historically less informed

And how many world bank loans are given to, well, let’s call them “less than stellar” African governments?

All the Chinese needed for the infra loan projects to work were nations who couldn’t access financing via other means. Now they’ve been doing it a while, even the nations that can access the financing have been dipping into that well. Sometimes it’s just better terms.

most countries want to feel respected and included in the world. They don't just want you to take their resources and leave them in the dust. Even if the thought is " hey we'll fix your stuff in return then so be it". U.S. lets you know that the moment you don't go as planned and disagree with their view then bye bye to all of he efforts your country put in and momentum. Lets not forget economical momentum is just the thing a less developed country needs. One strategy doesn't work for all. This is clear from whats happening right now before us. Brics initiative, Brics plus and so on. you literally have the worlds biggest countries aligned for a parallel agenda. Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa and even more are joining like turkey and some European countries. This is not small matter to overlook and be arrogant about.

This would have been my response to the this ^ reply. They have capital to spare and also, what they're gaining from these countries in return more than justifies there loss in capital. the gain exclusive rights to ports and military presence. recently they made a an effort to include African countries as their allies. Concluding that they will allow African countries to retain control over there capital wand profits while allowing china to export their natural resources. this is attractive for African nations.

It’s worth noting that while some of the dud Chinese loans are for resources and whatever there are also plenty of nonperforming loans for projects that couldn’t possibly be useful to China, like the Montenegrin highway to nowhere: https://www.rferl.org/a/montenegro-billion-dollar-chinese-hi...

One other interesting note is that the way the financing is structured, the loans are not coming from the Chinese state but state owned banks, which seems like a mostly pedantic distinction, except the state owned banks also do much of the normal lending activity within China itself. Those banks now face the double whammy of dud property loans domestically and these dud loans to other countries, which is not helping the Chinese economic slowdown.

The World Bank and IMF generally don't (and can't) call in loans so I don't know what you're trying to say there. Sometimes what happens is shithole countries default on their debts and then whine about injustice when lenders refuse to extend the terms.

It is injustice. Loans are not just social mechanisms to begin with. There's nothing "just" about the west's domination of the globe; and in fact, justice would look like the west paying out to the rest of the world and expecting nothing back.

Not that the west ever gave a fuck about justice beyond intraclass squabbling

Also don't forget U.S. debt to China. the picture is painted clear of who depends on who.

China has $774B of US debt. The US total debt is $36T. 2% is not control of anything. That is smaller than the daily trading volume. China used to hold more but sold it recently.

My apologies I meant the other way. like what you said.