Beijing turns its back on embattled Robert Mugabe ( Zimbabwe )

The Times ^ | September 19, 2007 | Jane Macartney

[Billthedrill]

I've seen estimates of what subsidizing Cuba for all those years cost the Soviet Union, and they'd make a despot's hair curl. China knows (1) it isn't getting any better in Zimbabwe, (2) it is getting more expensive, and (3) that whatever strategic value that train wreck of a country may have had isn't balancing well against what it will cost to maintain it.

It doesn't mean they're going away, it only means they're not buying whatever Mugabe has left to sell. Cold old world, innit?

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks G76.

The decision deals a heavy blow to a country where unemployment is 80 per cent, inflation hit 7,600 per cent in July and the value of the Zimbabwean dollar on the black market recently fell to 500,000 to the pound.

But other than that, everything is great!

Prediction -- Chavez and Castro will step in.

[Anti-Bubba182]

Megalomania.

[Max in Utah]

In pre 1900s Zimbabwe would of been ripped apart by civil war or invaded by a neighbor by now. I don’t understand todays world. How does a failed nation, stay nation for this long?

Because no one else wants the place.