What is a bad idea?! A lot of stuff is mentioned in the video.
Partnering with China for anything. Those deals usually end up being bad.
How so ?
It depends on what they can get away with. Small Pacific islands find they suddenly have a naval base and scores of military for training purposes. The loans can be more than the small economies are going to be able to repay.
Do they?! Could you elaborate on that? Link to reliable sources? It's not something I know much about, so please do!
Greenlandic minister wants to strengthen cooperation with China
Yes, things like that would never happen when small island nations make deals with the West, would they?!
Google says that "The U.S.-China Perception Monitor is published by the Carter Center, a 501(c)(3), not-for-profit, nongovernmental organization founded in 1982 in Atlanta." I know nothing else about it, but the Carter Center (Wikipedia) doesn't appear to be a Chinese propaganda outlet.
I would also like to see these questions answered - with more than generalized postulates.
While I agree that deals with China are probably not a good idea, I think it is also a question of how the deals are made. China has no problem paying bribery to get their deals, and so the deals can be a lot worse than they would need to be. African countries have found that it was only Chinese that got the well-paid positions in the enterprises set up as part of the deal, whereas the Africans were expected to do the menial tasks, sometimes under slave-like conditions, under control of Chinese masters.
Don't give up so soon. Weltspiegel is from the German media ARD (or Das Erste). I found this, but it can't be what you are referring to:
Thanks for the links.
Well, then I guess that with the art of this particular deal nothing can possibly go wrong.
The question I ask myself when I read something like this is: So why the hell don't African nations borrow all the money from Japan instead of from China? Or from the World Bank? The article doesn't say, but I assume that it's because those other money lenders aren't willing to lend those African nations enough, which is why those nations resort to borrowing money from China - or even from private investment fonds, which are even more expensive. It looks as if China's interest rates are cheaper than the interest rates of hedge funds, which I assume is the reason why the African nations prefer to borrow money from China instead of from private enterprise when they can't borrow more money from Japan or European nations.
Yes, we all know: Borrowing money comes at a cost, in particular when you can't pay it back.
First of all, I think it's great that China prefers to support sustainable energy. American companies appear to be much too willing to support coal and oil extraction.
I also think that railroads are good, and so are bridges and harbors. That some of those projects don't pay off, is nothing new, but I would like to see how China handles the fact that they don't pay off. Will China act the way Western countries used (use?) to act?, i.e. will China take advantage of those debtor countries and begin to make demands that will harm the populations of those countries? I can see why the suspicion would arise: Why wouldn't China treat Africa the way Western nations have done for a couple of hundred years? But is it actually what is happening?
It's because China puts itself in those spaces. They look around for help, and there's China, smiling and offering them the money. That's what soft power is. China has been doing it for decades. So has the US, until very recently.
Yes.
No. The US until very recently has been conducting hard power ever since the end of WW II.
China "puts itself in those spaces." That sounds very suspicious and ominous, doesn't it?! What "spaces" are we talking about exactly? And how does China "put itself" in them?
Both China and the USA have been using hard as well as soft power for decades. One of the institutions in charge of soft power has been the USAID, responsible for creating goodwill. And the USAID is not alone in this. You never know who's behind sponsoring dogsled races, for instance.
Out of the two of us, which has worked in the international aid and development industry and therefore knows what he's talking about?
And he offers much less sinister explanations for what China has been doing:
What do you have to offer? That China is "smiling and offering them the money!"
Hakeem Jeffries Holds Press Briefing During CODEL In Denmark (Forbes on YouTube, April 25, 2025 - 25:16 min.)
He'll cherish the small amount of people, and all that. Well, I'm convinced! Not to mention in awe of his fine command of language.
I am not an expert on royals, but I think that Princess Isabella should be taught to eat kiviak (Polarpedia) before they find an authentic Greenlander to marry her off to. I mean, isn't that already the royal thing to do? To strengthen the bond between territories by means of intermarriage? I wouldn't be surprised if the King of the USA had already proposed a similar transaction to Barron. Think of the headlines of that story!
Greenlandic politician: One should consider closing down the U.S. consulate
Tulsy Gabbard appears to have learned about crisis management from Pete Hegseth: The scandal isn't what the Trump administration has told their spy agencies to do against other countries. It's what somebody has done to her and Trump by leaking what the USA is now doing:
However, that appears to be exactly who you are.
If the U.S. intelligence agencies were simply trying to get to learn about the wonderful Greenlanders, I don't see why Tulsi Gabbard would be so busy accusing people within those agencies of "leaking and politicizing classified information" (see post 791). Why get up in arms if all they had been told to do was to help a notoriously knowledgable and inquisitive president learn more about the ways and customs of the indigenous population of Greenland?
And when Sands starts lying again in defense of Trump, he gets even more confrontational.
I tend to get a little queasy when, on rare occasions, I find myself agreeing with Conservatives, so let me point out that Jarlov's "as much as they want" is obviously hyperbolic.
Maybe she hasn't seen the latest Trump gaffe about the history of Alcatraz based on an old Clint Eastwood movie ...
Quite true. And if Trump want Greenland, and the Grønlændere don’t want a deal with him, then the president of the United States can go screw himself.
That's what I said.
Well, it did come out rather differently.
I don't think we should do that. They might actually say "yes", and we would be stuck with them.
