The discourse coming out of the U.S. and China around the visit of the U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan keeps reminding me of a particular stage direction in Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf:
George: Stop braying!
Martha: [braying] I don’t bray!
In other words, the tenor around the visit has escalated to such a no-you-shut-up level that actual communication may now be impossible.
In contrast, it’s very interesting to track other conversations around working with China coming from the Global South. Our coverage spotlights three trends:
First, China’s integration with Global South economies via rail expansion in Southeast Asia, and through the engagement between provinces like Hunan with African agricultural producers, shows that China will only become more crucial to Global South economies in the next few years.
Second, Angola’s hard-nosed tendering process for the Lobito rail and logistics project shows how some Global South countries are learning from their peers’ unhappy experiences with Chinese loan-supported infrastructure. Instead of kicking the Chinese out (the logical conclusion of Western framings of China’s ‘predatory lending’), Angola found pragmatic ways of layering the involvement of Chinese and Western actors, all while keeping a beady eye on sustainability.
Third, responses in Sri Lanka to Zambia’s debt deal show that no matter how problematic certain aspects of Chinese lending are, China is now a crucial partner in the debt restructuring processes in many countries.
The current U.S.-China dust-up reflects a certain level of rich-country privilege on both sides. In contrast, the pragmatic responses from the rest of the world reflect that the Global South doesn’t have the luxury of picking fights.
