China’s deal with the tiny nation of Montenegro makes sense if you realize it’s not about money

Montenegro is a tiny nation Balkan nation across the Adriatic Sea from Italy, nestled between Serbia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Kosovo, Albania, and Croatia, and with a population roughly the size of Vermont’s. It’s in deep trouble because a past government, using a $1 billion loan from a Chinese state bank, entered into a deal with a Chinese state-owned construction company to build a 270-mile-long highway. Now, with only 25-miles extending from nowhere to nowhere built, the debt is coming due and Montenegro has no money with which to pay it. Montenegro’s troubles are waking Europe to the way China has inveigled poor countries into its debt, giving it ownership interests across Europe.

According to NPR, in Montenegro there’s confusion about how the former government could enter into such a manifestly disastrous agreement:

Montenegro’s government says the first section put it in so much debt that it can no longer afford to build the rest of the highway. “I think we will pay not maybe this generation, but future generations,” says Soc, the former justice minister. “But I don’t think this is a problem from China. It is our bad decision.”
He’s not the only one blaming the country’s previous government for catapulting the country into historic debt with this project, which was signed in 2014 with the China Road and Bridge Corporation, and funded by the Export-Import Bank of China. “We are now [a] victim of the extremely bad decision of the former government,” said an exasperated Montenegrin Deputy Prime Minister Dritan Abazovic to Euronews this spring in an effort to appeal to the EU to come to Montenegro’s rescue; the country aims to be an EU member one day.

A copy of the loan contract reviewed by NPR shows that if Montenegro is not able to repay China’s state-owned Export-Import Bank on time, the bank then has the right to seize land inside Montenegro, as long as it doesn’t belong to the military or is used for diplomatic purposes.

In addition, Montenegro’s former government signed off on allowing a Chinese government court to have the final say on the execution of the contract. Deputy Prime Minister Abazovic told Euronews in May that he finds the terms incredulous. “This is not normal,” he said “This is out of any kind of logic of national interest.”

RE: So if they don’t pay, is china going to invade Montenegro?

China does not need to. The infrastructure agreements always have a TAKE OVER clause and that's what China wants. The debt does not need to be repaid. Just look at Greece as an example ....

Under its Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing has purchased the Greek port of Piraeus, turning it into the second-largest port in the Mediterranean, and it’s also constructing billions of dollars-worth of highways and railways, including a planned high-speed railway connecting Belgrade and Budapest.

WHY? China doesn’t want money; it wants LAND and CONTROL –in Africa, Europe, Asia, and Latin America. By exporting an economy-breaking disease and finagling nations to take on debts they can never repay, it’s building an Empire greater than the Romans or British ever did, and it’s doing so without spilling a drop of blood in battle.

“using a $1 billion loan from a Chinese state bank, entered into a deal with a Chinese state-owned construction company to build a 270-mile-long highway. Now, with only 25-miles extending from nowhere to nowhere built”

Sorry about our left hand not doing the job contracted for, our right hand is still has sticky fingers though.

China has hundreds of deals like this around the world. Their problem is they don’t currently have the ability to project their military force to these areas.

Montenegro can renege on the debt and China can’t do much about it. That is why I expect China will offer very generous terms, but one of them to be a military base.

Once that is in place the PLA can enforce its European contracts.

Fraud, over billing and kickbacks seem to be built into Belt and Road projects favoring China.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Belt-and-Road/Belt-and-Road-projects-in-limbo-as-Bangladesh-cuts-budgets

and https://www.easybranches.com/crime/robbery/9700282 “...According to media reports, the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina found that Chinese companies were charging three times the normal price for construction, and slashed $5.72 billion from the China-funded Akhaura-Sylhet and Joydebpur-Ishwardi railway projects that are part of the BRI agreement signed between the two countries...”

The main conditions of the contract with China required that the contractors of the railway construction be selected by the Chinese government, and the government of Bangladesh pay for land acquisition, resettlement of locals, and worker wages. The Chinese government pays construction costs, which account for about 80 percent to 85 percent of the total cost of the projects...”

Here’s another article: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9753455/Road-Montenegro-1-billion-pocket-China-botched-270-mile-highway.html

China is running out of cheap raw materials and they needs poor countries more than the poor countries need China, the poor countries are starting to figure it out.

I can see countries telling China to stuff it, nationalizing everything the Chinese have touched, putting the Chinese in a minority ownership position and if the Chinese refuse I think we will see small countries booting the Chinese.

I can also see this being done as a form of REPARATION for the Chinese virus.

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