Geshan Dissanayake
1 HN recommender · recommended in 3 months, 2020–2023
8:07 · 61K views · Jul 19, 2018
A clip of Yanis Varoufakis answering a question about China versus the EU on debt conditions. He contrasts Chinese non-interventionist lending with EU conditionality, drawing on the Piraeus port.
Cited in threads on Chinese lending and the Belt and Road as an informed firsthand view from a former Greek finance minister.
4 comments from Hacker News
Here's a great clip of Varoufakis discussing the port of Piraeus as a specific example (but also examples in Africa) of how reasonable the Chinese are to deal with: this video
I think saying that "they are both gunning to be #1" and "undermining other countries" is more of a projection than reality. Yanis Varoufakis, former Minister of Finance of Greece, who has participated in the Belt and Road Initiative, makes it quite clear that China is "non-interventionist to the point where we can't imagine it": this video The current trajectory of sinophobia based on incorrect, overblown and unrealistic readings of CCP, indeed does not have a happy ending. That's why the trajectory should be changed. > the nationalism isn't just some reaction by their citizens to unfairness, it's 100% cultivated by their gov't on purpose. I'm sorry, try talking to large number of mainland Chinese people first, they'll disagree with you. Blaming everything on "but Chinese people are brainwashed" is just an attempt to deny reality. You have an extreme view of the CCP's brainwashing capabilities. If they're that good at brainwashing, they would have eradicated many more down-to-earth societal problems a long time ago, such as the societal disdain for vocational jobs. They've been trying to get rid of the social stigma of vocational schools for years now, in order to prevent the job market from being crowded out by too many university graduates, but they've only had limited success. Try watching some actual Chinese propaganda for a while. You'll see that it's very primitive, not very convincing, and frankly quite bad. I don't know why everybody keeps thinking they're brainwashing
What sort of historical precedence? Historical precedence from the Ming dynasty showed that even when they have a big fleet, they're not interested in colonizing territories. The Ming fleet only traded, not conquered. Look up Zhang He. Historical evidence from the Qing dynasty showed that in the 18th century, Chinese mining settlers in Malaysia tried to submit themselves under the rule of the Qing, but the Qing emperor refused, saying China is big enough already. Lookup Lanfang Republic. Historical precedence from the Republican era showed that the People's Republic has given up territory compared to the Republic. See all of outer Mongolia, which was ceded (and which Taiwan, a.k.a. the Republic, still formally claims). Historical evidence from a few years ago shows that China's policy is non-interventionist. Lookup Yanis Varoufaski, former Greek minister: this video Lookup Gyude Moore, "China in Africa: an African perspective" Where is the evidence that we can expect China to behave like the US?
Note: "Soc, the former justice minister. ''But I don't think this is a problem from China. It is our bad decision.'' They can almost certainly renegotiate for easier conditions: Yanis Varoufakis on China vs EU conditions: this video