The China Question: Should The West Return To Industrialization?

Adebayo Adeniran
4 min readSep 9, 2024

While embracing digitalization?

Hudson McDonald via Pexels

It is beyond doubt that China’s winning the 21st century.

Its footprints in disparate parts of the globe is self-evident: Latin America, the Caribbean Islands, Asia and Africa.

That English, Spanish and French are the means of communication in these places is completely immaterial; commerce and commercial ambitions trump fluency and multilingualism.

Completely fatigued from being lectured and sanctioned by the global north, nations of the global south have embraced all things Chinese like fish to water.

And just as fish are known to take the bait of the fisherman, in their search for free food, the Chinese are capturing the entire world, one nation at a time, by baiting them with cheap loans.

But there are no free lunches.

Sooner or later, you pay the price of your lack of fiscal prudence and Sri Lanka is an extraordinary case in point for all students of finance, economics and history.

Unable to pay its debt to its new masters, it was forced to give its prized jewels for next to nothing.

The likes of Zambia, Zimbabwe, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo are currently in the clutches of the CCP.

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Adebayo Adeniran

A lifelong bibliophile, who seeks to unleash his energy on as many subjects as possible