Whether you are a wealthy first-world country or a developing nation, China has proven to be an untrustworthy partner that only looks out for itself while exploiting the trust of those willing to work with it.
An acid spill from a dam holding acidic waste from a Chinese copper mine in Zambia has contaminated a river, with the pollution reaching at least 60 miles downstream from the spill site. The Kafue River is over 930 miles long and supplies around five million Zambians with drinking water. There has been a smaller acid leak at another Chinese mine. Chinese copper mines in Zambia have unsurprisingly been “accused of ignoring safety, labor and other regulations,” according to the Associated Press.
Zambia is trapped between a rock and a hard place, though, because it is more than $4 billion in debt to China. Countries such as Zambia, Sri Lanka, and Djibouti have found themselves exploited by the Chinese government’s predatory loans. China essentially extorts these countries to obtain more control over important facilities such as ports.
Developing countries have been blinded by promises of grand Chinese construction projects and too-good-to-be-true deals and have become subject to the whims of the Chinese government. As it turns out, the military expansionist regime that already enslaves its own citizens has no problem exploiting and extorting other countries to try and expand its military footprint.
China’s selfish interests also showcase the folly of Western countries relying on it for climate cooperation. China skirting Zambian environmental regulations to extract as much copper from the country as possible with little regard for, say, the country’s drinking water is representative of China’s attitude toward the environment worldwide.
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That is most prevalent in China’s fishing industry, where hordes of Chinese ships swarm the waters of developing countries such as Argentina to trawl the ocean floor without regard for regulations, rules, or the ecosystem. China is also the leading plastic polluter in the world’s oceans, primarily attributed to its global fishing. China does not care if it destroys Zambia’s waterways or the world’s oceans so long as it can extract the resources it wants. This is who Democratic politicians think they can cooperate with on “climate change.”
First-world countries should understand by now that China is not an ally or a reliable partner with whom they can work in good faith. Developing countries such as Zambia need to understand that selling their national soul to the Chinese government will not benefit them in the long run either. China does not care about cooperation or collaboration; it only cares about self-enrichment at any cost to whichever country it is “working with” or taking resources from.