Debating China’s BRI and Being Home to the Next Silicon Valley

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China’s Belt and Road has some questionable economic return potential. However, the Belt and Road is providing geopolitical returns. The Belt and Road has successful projects in Pakistan, Greece and some other countries. The projects are boosting the volume of trade with the countries in the Belt and Road.

After the debate, there was a 5% increase to 39% who voted Yes, the BRI is a large financial blunder.

There is some new development on the BRI. Italy could vote to support the Belt and Road later this month. Italy would be the first G7 country to support the Belt and Road.

China is already second to the United States in large technology companies and second in billion+ dollar technology unicorn companies. Shenzhen is the location of this new silicon valley. Shenzhen is a smartphone center.

After the debate, the number who voted Yes increased 14% to 69% Yes, that the next silicon valley would be in China.

SOURCES- Intelligence 2 Debates

Written by Brian Wang

10 thoughts on “Debating China’s BRI and Being Home to the Next Silicon Valley”

  1. And then there is this from CNBC yesterday: ” Chinese companies are defaulting on their debts at an ‘unprecedented’ level.”

    Also, “Eight countries in danger of falling into China’s “debt trap” on qz.com is worth a look.

  2. I could easily see some of these countries simply choosing to default and there wouldn’t be much China could do about it since the road runs through foreign sovereign territory

    They will take it. They have taken ports, large farms, etc. that they have built and debt-slaved the nations involved with.

    It gives them justification to then ‘secure’ those assets later. Although, I would love to see them try that in Monroe Doctrine protected Latin America. Like Venezuela.

    Panama has leased out a lot of canal operations to the Chinese, btw. It is considered a national security threat in the Pentagon, but they could never say it out loud because of the Globalist Sellouts in Congress. But I can see Trump doing something about it after re-election.

  3. Only build where the returns are certain and the payback periods are short.

    Apparently you don’t understand why the SOEs that are building these projects exist in the first place. Profit/payback is last on their list of priorities. However cashflow and employment as well as putting these nations in to debt slavery to seize the assets later, is first.

  4. How about they wait till they have demand, rather than building stuff that will never be fully used.

    Reminds me of the Word Bank and IMF pushing for huge elephant projects in the third world in the ’70s. Large hydro projects were their favorites.

    It all blew up and the Brady Bonds had to be issued to bail out the Western Banks that participated.

    Meanwhile, on Planet Reality, micro-loans took off and immediately impacted the economies as is (at the village level, mostly), which causes further economic growth. Which will eventually lead to actually needing the power from those big hydro projects after all. But the bureaucrats that needed to spend money don’t benefit, you see. Same for China’s SOEs that are involved in this farce.

  5. In the end this will be China’s greatest economic mistake. The overland shipping volumes just do not support it and the vast majority of the pipeline infrastructure they have already built is severely underused as it its. How about they wait till they have demand, rather than building stuff that will never be fully used.

  6. Probably but Pakistan is a regional ally and China doesn’t have too many of those. So I suppose once you toss in geopolitical considerations it all makes sense.

  7. In the case of Pakistan particularly, they have a continuous history of being a deadbeat, and will never pay back those loans from China. If China were to ever make a profit from using Pakistan as a transit corridor, the Pakistanis would likely try to use that as leverage to gradually renegotiate the deal and extract/divert more of those profits to themselves. China will never see any returns.

  8. There is a reason most of these countries don’t have the foreign investment already; They are not honorable debtors. I could easily see some of these countries simply choosing to default and there wouldn’t be much China could do about it since the road runs through foreign sovereign territory. sure they could stop a train from going from China, but the rest of the road/rail/port would remain open and upstream trade would still happen, which would be just as important as a modern silk road doesn’t have exclusive trade goods like the ancient silk road did. So essentially, short of going to war, which would risk those assets anyway. I Fail to see why the beneficiary countries would not choose default, it is their usual game plan anyway because being part of most financial systems requires accountability which their governments have not learned is worth doing yet.

    As an example, remember, the hard part was building the panama canal, operating it is trivial and hugely profitable. Panama is no more dependent on the US than any other south American country. Better, I think would have been to establish an economic/trading that was internationally agreed upon system than to expend trillions giving countries that are not stable durable goods that they can simply appropriate.

  9. Improved transportation would have economical returns in most developing countries. The Chinese should focus on rails, roads, bridges and tunnels serving large central cities. Let tolls and fares pay for the projects. Money is still very cheap. They should be careful to not overdo it. Only build where the returns are certain and the payback periods are short.

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