Special to WorldTribune.com
China’s Supreme Leader Xi Jinping has ordered a drastic reduction in the speed and volume of buying influence in foreign countries due to China’s economic slowdown and the meager payback from many recipient nations.
China has the world’s largest hard currency reserve, currently at a staggering amount of $3 trillion, with which to buy “friendship” and influence in the most important parts of the world, especially in the energy rich Africa and strategically important places such as Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Central Asia and several nations in Central and South America.
Xi issued the edict on Feb. 6 at a steering committee he chairs to strategize China’s international policies and priorities.
Unlike the United States, Japan or some leading European countries, China lacks ideological and political appeal internationally. Consequently, China’s communist government utilizes its enormous newly gained wealth and cash to buy friendship and strategic partners.
In the past two decades, China has doled out hundreds of billions of dollars to obtain and sustain many “friends” and “strategic partners” all over the world.
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