Posted on 07/04/2021 10:49:56 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Montenegro is a tiny nation Balkan nation across the Adriatic Sea from Italy, nestled between Serbia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Kosovo, Albania, and Croatia, and with a population roughly the size of Vermont’s. It’s in deep trouble because a past government, using a $1 billion loan from a Chinese state bank, entered into a deal with a Chinese state-owned construction company to build a 270-mile-long highway. Now, with only 25-miles extending from nowhere to nowhere built, the debt is coming due and Montenegro has no money with which to pay it. Montenegro’s troubles are waking Europe to the way China has inveigled poor countries into its debt, giving it ownership interests across Europe.
According to NPR, in Montenegro there’s confusion about how the former government could enter into such a manifestly disastrous agreement:
Montenegro’s government says the first section put it in so much debt that it can no longer afford to build the rest of the highway. “I think we will pay not maybe this generation, but future generations,” says Soc, the former justice minister. “But I don’t think this is a problem from China. It is our bad decision.”
He’s not the only one blaming the country’s previous government for catapulting the country into historic debt with this project, which was signed in 2014 with the China Road and Bridge Corporation, and funded by the Export-Import Bank of China. “We are now [a] victim of the extremely bad decision of the former government,” said an exasperated Montenegrin Deputy Prime Minister Dritan Abazovic to Euronews this spring in an effort to appeal to the EU to come to Montenegro’s rescue; the country aims to be an EU member one day.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
So if they don’t pay, is china going to invade Montenegro?
(I wonder if the ‘big guy’ was anyway involved in this)
Well, if that bridge holds up they’ll be glad they built it...someday.
It was probably the most expensive part of the project.
Send China the bill for COVID and call it even.
Would brussels bail them out? I wouldn’t. The guilty party that accepted the terms of the Chicoms will never pay a price or miss a meal.
WHY? China doesn’t want money; it wants LAND and CONTROL –in Africa, Europe, Asia, and Latin America. By exporting an economy-breaking disease and finagling nations to take on debts they can never repay, it’s building an Empire greater than the Romans or British ever did, and it’s doing so without spilling a drop of blood in battle.
RE: Send China the bill for COVID and call it even.
Let’s say that even happens ( HA HA HA ).... where’s Montenegro going to get the money to MAINTAIN this road that’s hardly ever used?
“Send China the bill for COVID and call it even”
That thinking seems to be gaining ground in the UK - although it nowhere near evens up the ledger.
That is a bridge in France.
“using a $1 billion loan from a Chinese state bank, entered into a deal with a Chinese state-owned construction company to build a 270-mile-long highway. Now, with only 25-miles extending from nowhere to nowhere built”
Sorry about our left hand not doing the job contracted for, our right hand is still has sticky fingers though.
China has hundreds of deals like this around the world. Their problem is they don’t currently have the ability to project their military force to these areas.
Montenegro can renege on the debt and China can’t do much about it. That is why I expect China will offer very generous terms, but one of them to be a military base.
Once that is in place the PLA can enforce its European contracts.
Is NATO just going to accept hostile foreign bases being built in its own back yard?
Lets all group fund the $1 Billion dollars, and settle in Montenegro. Imagine what a beautiful country full of fed up Patriotic Americans could do with a country where we could control the borders in the heart of the EU? Just the fact that say 50,000,000 MAGA could group fund at $20 per, would drive the left insane. Let’s buy up some Montenegro?
Fraud, over billing and kickbacks seem to be built into Belt and Road projects favoring China.
and https://www.easybranches.com/crime/robbery/9700282 “...According to media reports, the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina found that Chinese companies were charging three times the normal price for construction, and slashed $5.72 billion from the China-funded Akhaura-Sylhet and Joydebpur-Ishwardi railway projects that are part of the BRI agreement signed between the two countries...”
The main conditions of the contract with China required that the contractors of the railway construction be selected by the Chinese government, and the government of Bangladesh pay for land acquisition, resettlement of locals, and worker wages. The Chinese government pays construction costs, which account for about 80 percent to 85 percent of the total cost of the projects...”
Here’s another article: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9753455/Road-Montenegro-1-billion-pocket-China-botched-270-mile-highway.html
China is running out of cheap raw materials and they needs poor countries more than the poor countries need China, the poor countries are starting to figure it out.
I can see countries telling China to stuff it, nationalizing everything the Chinese have touched, putting the Chinese in a minority ownership position and if the Chinese refuse I think we will see small countries booting the Chinese.
I can also see this being done as a form of REPARATION for the Chinese virus.
Knowing Montenegro geography, 270 miles is the circumference of the country 😂. There is no way that 1B$ was going to be sufficient to build a road of any significance in a mountainous country.
They should simply tell Chinese to get lost, and offer to send them people who signed the contract.
Breaking up Yugoslavia was stupid. Sure it had problems, but these are just too many small countries that are easy pickings.
RE: Knowing Montenegro geography, 270 miles is the circumference of the country 😂.
And if the ignoramus Woke folks in the USA ever know a country with this name exists, the first thing they’ll demand is for Montenegro to change its offensive name. 🤣😅
Not a problem. Declare the debt null and void as partial Wuhan virus reparations. China still owes NATO member Montenegro a lot more money.
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