“China – Communist Slave State”

Researchers have identified debts of at least $385bn (£286bn) owed by 165 countries to China for ”belt and road initiative” (BRI) projects, with loans systematically underreported to international bodies such as the World Bank.

The four-year study by US-based research lab AidData said the debt burdens were kept off the public balance sheets through the use of special purpose and semi-private loans, and were “substantially larger than research institutions, credit rating agencies, or intergovernmental organisations with surveillance responsibilities previously understood”.

Xi Jinping will do anything to avoid population decline

Have you ever achieved a goal in life only to find it’s not what you wanted after all? Have you made great sacrifices — and trampled over other people — to get to somewhere that you don’t in fact want to be? If so, spare a thought for the Chinese Communist Party.

The International Olympic Committee said on Wednesday that the only people allowed to attend the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing, China, are those who live in China.

“Tickets will be sold exclusively to spectators residing in China’s mainland, who meet the requirements of the COVID-19 countermeasures,” the IOC said.

I’m sick of the Olympics anyway.

The developer’s collapse isn’t leading to global contagion, but China’s looming economic disaster might.

A major mistake of the Cold War was the tendency of Western observers to overestimate the Soviet Union. I have often wondered if the same mistake is being repeated with the People’s Republic of China. Then again, for every article over the last 10 years that predicted China’s economy would overtake that of the U.S., there were at least two prophesying a “China crisis.”

“The endgame of Chinese communist rule has now begun,” wrote David Shambaugh in 2015. Wisely, he added: “Its demise is likely to be protracted.” That same year, Jim Chanos of Kynikos Associates warned, “We’re getting inexorably to a tipping point in China.”

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki insisted Monday that there’s “no link” between the U.S. settling criminal charges against a Huawei Technologies Co. executive last week and China’s release, hours later, of two Canadians accused of spying.

Huawei’s chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, received a hero’s welcome from the Chinese government upon her return to Shenzhen on Saturday after reaching a deferred prosecution agreement with U.S. prosecutors.

…She said the U.S. would not refer to the episode as a prisoner swap and dismissed questions about whether China would be encouraged to seize foreign hostages in any future legal disputes.

h/t HallsOfMacadamia