Chapter 07 One Belt One Road And Aborted Projects (3)

Pakistan’s Diamo Basha Dam project, which was ready to be built with a cost of $14 billion, was cancelled in 2017 after Pakistan was dissatisfied with the harsh conditions that the dam would be owned by China and 17,000 laborers would be imported from China. Most of the Communist Party’s Belt and Road projects are high-speed railroads, highways, ports, airports and other major infrastructure projects, but some countries don’t even have many ordinary railroads and so they don’t care whether they actually need them or not, and those that are urgently needed for people’s livelihoods are left unattended. Chinese laborers are used in most of the construction projects in which the Chinese Communist Party is involved. When Chinese laborers go to foreign countries to work, they are like slave laborers under the Communist dictatorship. Their passports are seized and detained. They have no personal freedom. They work overtime and have no holidays. They are not paid and are isolated from local communities. They are recruited by deception and false promises, are intimidated and threatened. Their labor protection and safety equipment are inadequate with poor living and working conditions. They are not provided with medical treatment for illness and injury. The Chinese government restricts workers’ freedom of speech and punishes those who lead protests. Thus, the Chinese workers have no human rights at all.

Many of the Belt and Road projects have not only posed huge debt risks for the participating countries but have also put China itself under financial pressure. Several countries deeply involved in Belt and Road projects have accumulated huge debts to China that have exceeded 10% of their GDP. They are under heavy pressure to repay their debts and are forced to accept the political and military demands of the Chinese Communist Party when they are unable to do so. The 417-kilometer high-speed railroad being built in Laos costs $5.6 billion, while Laos’ 2015 GDP was only $12.3 billion, making it difficult to pay the debt and in fact Laos does not need the high-speed railway. Meanwhile, China’s foreign exchange reserves accumulated over the years have plummeted and China’s financial credit has also declined. The domestic public is complaining about Xi Jinping’s “spreading money” to the outside world, regardless of domestic poverty and the welfare of the people. The Belt and Road will not benefit the Chinese people in any way but is only Xi Jinping’s personal political project, just as the Great Leap Forward was Mao’s personal political project and the Three Gorges Dam was Li Peng’s personal project.

In order to train his Belt and Road agents in Africa, Xi Jinping has given the green light to African students by granting them high scholarships starting from tens of thousands of RMB to 100,000-200,000 RMB a year. Xi Jinping not only provides higher than average standard dormitories for foreign students but also takes care of their lonely personal lives and mobilizes the Communist Youth League to organize Chinese female students to “accompany” them to take care of their personal lives and open the door for them to have promiscuous relationships with men and women. Many foreign students are rich and promoted and they do not do what they want, causing Chinese students to protest against the authorities’ policies, such as the expulsion of foreign students from Wuhan University in 2020.

In September 2017, Luo Jianbo, a professor of diplomacy at the Central Party School in Beijing, issued another warning: the focus should be on solving domestic problems, not on being a world leader. He pointed out : ” domestic problems are piling up and there is a lot of money to be spent, so don’t dream of being a ‘savior’ “.

In 2020, U.S. Vice President Pence described the Belt and Road as a “belt of bondage” (Debt-bound participating countries) and a “road of no return” (rotten, withdrawal).