China Competes With West in Aid to Its Neighbors

The New York Times ^ | September 18, 2006 | Jane Perlez

[A. Pole]

STUNG TRENG, Cambodia — In the dense humidity of northern Cambodia, where canoes are the common mode of transportation, a foreman from a Chinese construction company directs local laborers to haul stones to the ramp of a nearly completed bridge.

[...]

China’s generosity to Cambodia has caught Washington’s attention. The United States Navy is planning a port visit to Sihanoukville early next year, a first since the Khmer Rouge seized power in 1975.

In the Philippines, China is also making a big splash, offering an extraordinary package of $2 billion in loans each year for the next three years [...]

That made the $200 million offered separately by the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank look puny, officials from those banks said, and easily outstripped a $1 billion loan under negotiation with Japan.

[...]

Flush with nearly a trillion dollars in hard currency reserves and eager for stable friends in Southeast Asia, China is making big loans for big projects to countries that used to be the sole preserve of the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the United States and Japan.

[...]

For poor countries like Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar, and somewhat better-off countries like the Philippines, China’s loans are often more attractive than the complicated loans from the West.

The Chinese money usually comes unencumbered with conditions [...] The aid does not carry penalties for corruption that are being increasingly used by the World Bank president, Paul D. Wolfowitz. And China’s offers rarely include the extra freight of expensive consultants, provisions that are common to World Bank projects.

[...]

But Western aid donors complain that China is secretive about its aid projects, and that it declines to attend the traditional meetings presided over by the World Bank to coordinate aid activities in poor countries.

[...]

[A. Pole]

China’s offers rarely include the extra freight of expensive consultants

Chinese bump

[King Moonracer]

ChiComm menace.

[DoughtyOne]

...said the spider to the fly...

[snowman1]

They are doing this with the money we send over there, what is our balance of payments with china. """"billions""""

[A. Pole]

They are doing this with the money we send over there, what is our balance of payments with china. """"billions""""

This is a wise use of money. They invest in infrastructure which will be good for China too. Then gain friends, they will have reserves in form of lent money. They secure future markets. They gain stature and respect. Win, win, win in every aspect!

[lucysmom]

I heard an author interviewed about his book on China (wish I could remember his name). He said that China has called itself The Middle Kingdom for millennia. The meaning is not geographical, but means that they viewed themselves as the center of the civilized world. He said the last 150 years is just a string of bad luck in the collective Chinese psyche, and now they're rested, they're tanned, and they're back.