I'm not saying otherwise. Just like in the Global North quality of life also significantly declined at the same period due to applying the same kind of neoliberal policies (though arguably in a less severe manner than was done in ex-USSR countries).

But you should probably realize that propaganda about philantropic foreign investment is a recurring trope of colonization. France famously prides itself on developing public school and roads/railways in all its former colonies as part of its "civilizing mission". I'm not saying China has such a bad record as France in Africa (dozens of millions of deaths and countless suffering), but they don't exactly have a good track record in other regions and i don't see any convincing argument emerging that Chinese neo-colonialism (eg. privatization of key infrastructure and resources by foreign companies) is any better than Western neo-colonialism.

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago

I’m not saying otherwise. Just like in the Global North quality of life also significantly declined at the same period due to applying the same kind of neoliberal policies

I'm talking about countries like Cuba and Vietnam that were getting aid from USSR and weren't liberalized internally.

But you should probably realize that propaganda about philantropic foreign investment is a recurring trope of colonization.

What I'm pointing out is that China has a different economic system from the west, and at least so far the nature of their relationships has been quite different. The paper I linked above goes into the details of how these relationships work in practice and why the outcomes are positive.

The west is a military empire that dictates how countries subjugated by the west do their internal business, and topples governments that aren't friendly to the west. China has practically no foreign military presence and it does not meddle in internal affairs of the countries it does business with. It's a fundamentally different relationship.