@dnapway What a complicated way of saying they were offering a product/products in sectors China felt it needed to gain as much expertise expertise in as possible. Fast forward a decade and a half and the likes of BYD and Xiaomi are coming up with products of superior quality
@PAstynome This is the sort of thing that takes generations. Once the folks old enough to remember the gulf being a backwater start to retire and die the region's prestige will sharpy increase. Took sometime for the brits and Swiss to attain their present reputations as well
@prime_jayson4@okaythenfuture@SPRequiem1 Sure it is, but I don't see why a country that is even more reliant on European aid than many of its neighbours and earns much of its forex from outright theft of a neighbouring country's mineral resources should be held up as some sort of model.
@neonetocrat Haha that won't be happening. It has the least amount of ethnicity and religious tension on the whole continent. With that being said I agree with you that many of these old heads pursue the same foreign policy they had during the cold war instead of adapting to the present.
@orikron Turkish should be atleast tier b. Biggest economy and military in the middle east, and a large and fast increasing number of speakers from many former soviet states as they return to their turkic roots.
@mpopv@RushDoshi@Noahpinion I agree with the latter part (A reluctance to upset young voters may have also played a role) but this is in no way a retreat from the pacific. I actually think there will be more of a focus on the pacific, hence the efforts towards a Nixon-style break up of Sino-Russian ties.
@haugejostein The more pertinent race imo is therefore the one towards being the goods and services provider of choice for the growing african middle class. I'd say while China is ahead on the goods the West definitely edges it when it comes to internet based services or education.
@haugejostein In reality a Russia easily has more energy than the whole african continent, and it is Chile that has mostly been the world's biggest copper producer, not a Zambia or a Congo. Likewise with uranium or rare earth.
@haugejostein There is this mistaken impression out there that Africa is a particularly resource rich continent which has many thinking "If only we could share the proceeds from resources fairly, we would be very wealthy." This logic only applies to tiny states like Equatorial Guinea.
@KalebweMutwale @Chichik_j It is. At the end of the day nearly every culture is where it is because of many a past foreign influence. Japan copied just about all of their alphabet from China, and it was from South America that those famous tomatoes in italian food came from 500 years ago.