China’s loans pushing world’s poorest countries to brink of collapse
China&#x27;s BRI has been a great advertisement for the IMF.<p>1. The IMF gives loans at significantly lower rates than China does. That clearly points out that the donor countries in the IMF are far more generous than any other entity that will lend to the countries in question, which completely goes against the idea that the IMF is trying to extract money out of poorly situated countries.<p>2. The IMF has never, AFAIK, appropriated land and property for default, or if it has, it&#x27;s been on a very small scale over many decades. China has already appropriated massive parts of sovereign territory during a very short period of time. That&#x27;s another indication of how generous the IMF really is.<p>3. Most importantly, the major complaint about the IMF has always been their demands for &quot;austerity&quot;. Admittedly (as in, the IMF has literally admitted this), the IMF regulations were too strict in this regard, and the IMF has consequently loosened a lot of these requirements. But what the BRI has shown is that the intention, and effect, of these requirements is indeed good for the citizens of the recipient country, because it reduces the chances that the leaders simply pocket the IMF money (some still do), and it reduces the chances that the country will be caught in a debt spiral (some still do). The BRI has shown an alternative where the donors do not require structural changes from the recipient countries. And almost predictably, the result isn&#x27;t that it leads to the recipient country&#x27;s administration running their country in a fiscally sustainable manner without the evil foreign oversight. The result is that the country continues to be run terribly, benefiting the leaders personally, and moving all the costs off to the next government and&#x2F;or the citizens themselves, but a few years into the future. This is fairly obvious when you recognize that invariably it&#x27;s teh leaders who brought the country to a position where they need to beg for money that are getting the donated money itself.<p>Essentially, the Belt and Road Initiative has pretty much completely undermined the idea that the IMF&#x2F;World Bank (I didn&#x27;t mention the World Bank because it&#x27;s broadly considered far less coercive than the IMF) are an evil tool of western imperialism (which was obvious in the first place, considering the WB&#x2F;IMF are completely voluntary organizations, and if they weren&#x27;t so evil in the first place countries wouldn&#x27;t go to them), and are in fact providing loans to countries that would never get them at all otherwise, at rates that are lower than anyone else would offer, and look out for the actual citizens (including future citizens) of the country in a way no other lending entity does.<p>The only reason countries are opting for BRI funds instead of the IMF at this point is because their corrupt leaders know that even though those funds are far more expensive, and will invariably lead to ceding sovereign control of territory&#x2F;projects to China, China will not care about the leaders themselves pocketing the money, unlike the IMF.