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 ...
And if Montenegro tells them to just shove their takeover clause, is china going to invade Montenegro?
Montenegro became the 29th member of NATO on 5 June 2017.
Modern colonialism. Why is no one screaming about this like they do and did about past colonialism.
“… 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 ”
Sounds like Montenegro needs to call Gov. Newsom for some advice….
I think there may still be eight or nine American high school English departments that teach The Great Gatsby, which briefly mentions Montenegro in passing.
The legendary Nero Wolfe was Montenegrin.
All Montenegro needs to do is to bribe a few Democrats (or “contribute” to their charitable foundations) to get money in the infrastructure bill to pay off Montenegro’s debt to China. That would be particularly attractive to the Democrats because it would mean US taxpayer dollars ending up in Chinese hands.
They don’t have to invade - they just take assets !
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