China also helped building headquarter for Vietnam Ministry of Public Safety http://mapio.net/pic/p-57003656/
The rumour is that this build is full of bugs in the walls and everywhere, so that the Ministry is still using their old building, the new one is only for unimportant paperwork.
Idea for political trolling: just once, sell the other country a jet or whatever without a single bug, and laugh as they desperately tear it apart, trying to uncover something.
> ''The culprit,'' Mr. Schlesinger said, ''is American complacency, the tendency to assume that the Russians are technically inferior to us and that we can handle them.''
This article may be from 1988, but it seems somewhat applicable to current events.
I can feel the tensions between the West and China heating up notch by notch now.. It's a bit uncomfortable.
I even feel a personal dampening on what I will say publicly about China on social media, just because of hypothetical tech/travel opportunities, and I don't even live there.
They're also attempting to take control of the local operations of foreign companies in China:
"American and European companies involved in joint ventures with state-owned Chinese firms have been asked in recent months to give internal Communist Party cells an explicit role in decision-making"
"Late last month, executives from more than a dozen top European companies in China met in Beijing to discuss their concerns about the growing role of the ruling Communist Party in the local operations of foreign firms"
Don't blindly apply what works in the US to China.
The difference in population/social structure and a hundred other things, result in different approaches. Just like a pride of lions surrounded by a herd of wildebeest work differently to what happens inside an ant hill.
Sure the ants have conquered every nook of the world, that doesn't mean every animal on the serangeti has to start getting jittery.
Most likely not. For example, half of all Samsung phones are now made in Vietnam. China is gradually losing all of Samsung's business. The same will ultimately hold true for Apple. Ten years from now, the only companies that will still be making smartphones in China, will be their domestic brands.
Economists tend to forecast at 30 years by extrapolating the last few years. It is not obvious to me that the chinese economic miracle of the last 20 years, largely fueled by foreign investments (every industry in the world outsourcing to China), and after 2008 by domestic debt, is sustainable and reproducible in the long term.
There were concerns with using Huawei equipment in New Zealand for the UFB Network (New Zealand's national fiber optic network) for similar reasons.
I can't remember what equipment they ended up using. But all I could think of at the time was that if Huawei and the Chinese weren't spying on us, then Cisco and the US government would be spying on us. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Of course, after Snowden, it was revealed that they were spying on us the whole time, with the NZ government being an enthusiastic participant as one of the Five Eyes nations. They had actually tapped the (only) submarine internet cable running out of New Zealand.
>Of course, after Snowden, it was revealed that they were spying on us the whole time, with the NZ government being an enthusiastic participant as one of the Five Eyes nations. They had actually tapped the (only) submarine internet cable running out of New Zealand.
Yep, it's mostly theater -- "oh, those pesky Chinese might spy", when they already give every bit out to others.
Here's a quick sample of some of China's computer donations to parliaments, defense and foreign affairs departments and police and immigration departments in recent years:
These are just the overt instances where press releases are issued with prime ministers, senior officials and ambassadors shaking hands in front of donated computers and laptops. There has also been research such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GhostNet which is relevant to this discussion.
Also very telling is how Western countries are responding. Some recent articles:
Not sure what going public with this benefits anyone. They could have covertly leaked missinformation or gain benefits by being in control what is leaked.
>Seems such a small gain with potentially huge downside with African countries distancing themselves from China.
European countries and the US have been meddling in African countries for centuries, even more blatantly (including directly toppling governments or bringing in their armies) and they have hardly "distanced" themselves from them -- and they'll do that to China for such small peanuts?
The population doesn't know better or is kept down, and the leaders do what brings money to their accounts, not to the country.
Great point. Business as usual. I guess the downsides were heavily subsided by the fact that african countries don't really have much to gain from it nor do they (meaning their leaders) have any will to do so.
When will Africa realise that they have to learn to look out for themselves because no-one else will?
They declined Europe's "offer" (though realistically Europe really didn't have anything to offer its colonies after being devastated by WWII), but where they that much better off under Soviet influence and are they that much better off under China? It's time they started working towards real independence instead of always trying to chase the next free lunch.
Well that's exactly what the African Union is for.
The poverty trap right now is:
1) Loan from the IMF
2) Restructure your debt = privatization = loss of sovereignty and control
3) Repeat
The hope is that through a regional central bank, regional investment bank and a regional monetary fund they can break away from the shackles of predatory psycopaths like the IMF and the World Bank.
I personally think this will not actually succeed and neocolonial powers will do everything in their power so the union does not succeed.
For example, UNASUR, the Latin American equivalent of African Union, is dead on arrival because of corruption. The president pro-tempore, Macri, doesn't seem to be representing regional interests at all.
The AU seems likely to be a in better spot, in part because it is built on regional "pillars" and a lot of separate organizations, so even if the AU itself for some reason were to fail, it is already having massive impact. E.g. ECOWAS covers 15 countries and ~350 million in West Africa. SADC covers 16 states in Southern Africa etc. COMESA acts as a superset of SADC and EAC, providing a free trade area covering 400m+ people in Southern and Eastern Africa, and so on.
A number of monetary unions have started coalescing the currencies of he continent, as well, so even if the progress towards a single African currency were to fail, that too is still having an impact.
That's true, but also changing, with the AU getting increasingly willing to send in joint AU forces to stabilize countries, or pressuring various governments to hold elections. That the AU is taking a more active role in curtailing dictators is quite ironic given that one of the drivers in getting to the Sirte declaration that laid a lot of the groundwork for reviving the work on the AU was Gadaffi...
>They declined Europe's "offer" (though realistically Europe really didn't have anything to offer its colonies after being devastated by WWII), but where they that much better off under Soviet influence
Well, at least they got their freedom from European colonialism.
Most of the french speaking african countries (and some others) don't even own their own currency[1]. The way they can spend "their" money is dicated by guidelines set by the french Department of the Treasury.
You see them chasing the next free lunch, I see lobbyng. And compared to the billions spend in lobbying in the Americas or Europe, building the AU headquarters must have been pocket change. More so with backdoors.
I mean they made a big spectacle of "overthrowing" colonial rule, but with the effect that they still have effective colonial rule (as you point out), but kicking out the actual Frenchmen living there they removed any incentive of the colonial powers to actually contribute any services back and build a functioning society.
It's the supposed freedom fighters who are just chasing free lunches and not actual freedom. Though I suppose they may never have had a chance. Look how the colonial powers have reacted to pan-Arabism or the Rhodesian UDI.
http://www.nytimes.com/1988/11/15/world/the-bugged-embassy-c...