CathInfo.com

Cardinal Ricardo J. Vidal, archbishop emeritus of Cebu, has written to the Philippine bishops that on Oct. 17, 1949, Mary Mediatrix of All Grace (said to) Teresia Castillo, “Pray hard for China’s dream is to invade the whole world. The Philippines is one of its favorites. Money is the evil force that will lead the people of the world to destruction.”

in just two years after 2010 China had pledged over $100 billion to develop commercial projects in Africa, a period in which the continent had effectively become de facto Chinese province, unchallenged by any developed nation which in the aftermath of the financial crisis had enough chaos at home to bother with what China may be doing in Africa.

Since then China's financial colonization of Africa has only accelerated, and according to a study by the China-Africa Research Initiative at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, China had lent a total of $143 billion to 56 African nations facilitated principally by the Export-Import Bank of China and the China Development Bank. By sector, close to a third of loans were directed toward financing transport projects, a quarter toward power and 15% earmarked for resource mining including hydrocarbon extraction. Just 1.6% of Chinese loans were dedicated to the education, healthcare, environment, food and humanitarian sectors combined, confirming that all China interested in was building a giant commodity/trade/military hub.

Just seven countries – the strategically important Angola, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Kenya, Republic of the Congo, Sudan and Zambia – accounted for two thirds of total cuмulative borrowing in 2017 from China, with oil-rich Angola alone representing a 30% share, or $43 billion (35% of Angolan 2017 GDP). Ultimately, Angola reached a loans-for-oil settlement, with Beijing tying the country's future oil production to shipments to China in order to service the country's burgeoning infrastructure debt. According to an April 2018 IMF study, as of the end of 2017, about 40% of low-income Sub-Saharan African countries are now in debt distress or assessed as being at high risk of debt distress including Ethiopia, the Republic of the Congo and Zambia.

Amusingly, in a September 2018 speech to the triennial Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in Beijing, President Xi Jinping said Chinese investment came “with no strings attached” and pledged a further $ 60 billion of loans for African infrastructure development over the next three years. As it turns out, Xi was only joking because as we reported last month, China was set to take over Kenya's lucrative Mombassa port if Kenya Railways Corporation defaults on its loan from the Exim Bank of China. The China-built, China-funded standard gauge railway, also known as the Madaraka Express, was plagued by cost overruns, and outside observers questioned its economic viability, but China was not worried: after all, if the 80%-China funded project failed, Beijing would have full recourse. Call it a "debt-for-sovereignty" exchange.