Montenegro learns true cost of China-backed $1 bn road to nowhere

If they don’t have you… you don’t NEED IT.

The road was made in the mountains, which required not just bridges but tunnels as well.

Then add in corrupt construction contracts.

And here are two examples of the bridges, and the spans they cover.

As you can see by the heights, and number of columns, this ONE section was not cheap to make.

The savings and speed of traffic going from point A to B, going on a level rather than up/down, switching back and forth, sadly, looks more and more to have been badly over estimated.

A money pit than will most likely give control to the CCP in this nation.

To fight China’s economic extortion, take a page from the Cold War

…they are indicative of a much more alarming trend in the behavior of the Chinese Communist Party, which amounts to economic extortion and coercion in support of its geopolitical aims.

The economic extortion isn’t limited to Australia. In Africa, allegations of bribery followed Huawei as it attempted to secure an exclusive contract to build a 5G network in Namibia. A member of city council was allegedly offered upwards of $360,000 to drop her opposition to the agreement. In Ecuador, a dam project that was ostensibly intended to help lift the country out of poverty led to a national scandal with shoddy workmanship, unmet promises, bribes and the Chinese Communist Party effectively owning the dam in question as Quito could not keep up with the payments. In Sri Lanka, too, the Chinese Communist Party, through the Belt and Road Initiative managed to get Columbo to hand over a port and some 15,000 acres for a 99-year lease after the government couldn’t make payments on the development project.

Any why is the legacy media not reporting on this?

Could be they are already a CCP asset!

In case after case, we see the Chinese Communist Party offering overly generous terms to countries in need of development and assistance, only to saddle them with unrealistic payments while corrupting the political systems of the countries in question and ending up with the assets in the end. General Secretary Xi Jinping would make a great stand-in for Tony Soprano if they decided to reboot the series and set it in Beijing.

But I heard too many fools WANT communism.

What has been missing is leadership from Washington. We need to offer competitive financing and loan guarantees for countries wishing to rebuild or redevelop their infrastructure – guarantees not loaded with quid-pro-quo requirements or onerous terms that will ensure their failure. We need to call out the economic extortion of the Chinese Communist Party vocally and often in international fora and multilateral engagements. We need to advocate for international norms and standards that conform to liberal western rules, and not the authoritarian proclivities of the Chinese Communist Party.

As if we can get that with the current “administration”, and beijing joe and commie kamala!

Washington needs to wage “lawfare” just as aggressively as Beijing is presently doing. This means leveraging the law to our advantage and thinking creatively to counter the influence and economic extortion of the Chinese Communist Party.

And we had that, before 2020.  Someone who stood up and said NO to the CCP.

…the desire to have a free and liberal international order that is based on the rule of law, not economic extortion.

Sadly, we are seeing freedoms and liberties and rights eroding everywhere, being given up/forcefully taken in the name of security, the “oppressed/victims”, etc.

We can look at what the CCP is doing (in Hong Kong), and what Star Wars predicted in the prequals.

The free western civilization is falling, and its citizens are cheering for its fall.

How sad is that.