SAN LUIS, Ecuador—Built near a spewing volcano, it was the biggest infrastructure project ever in this country, a concrete colossus bankrolled by Chinese cash and so important to Beijing that China’s leader, Xi Jinping, spoke at the 2016 inauguration.
Today, thousands of cracks have emerged in the $2.7 billion Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric plant, government engineers said, raising concerns that Ecuador’s biggest source of power could break down. At the same time, the Coca River’s mountainous slopes are eroding, threatening to damage the dam.
“We could lose everything,” said Fabricio Yépez, an engineer at the University of San Francisco in Quito who has closely tracked the project’s problems. “And we don’t know if it could be tomorrow or in six months.”
It is one of many Chinese-financed projects around the world plagued with construction flaws.
Right, I’m skeptical there’s any real change, or that we this guy would know if there was one. These short term fluctuations don’t have much significance in the big picture. If any suitable opportunity appeared tomorrow, the wolf would pounce. It just means they think there’s an advantage to appearing reasonable at the moment, or something.
Right, same guy at the top of a one party system, the only change is that they see they need to go back to not being obvious bullies. Since that guy was attacked in the UK this has been a trend, talking nice and reassigning the loudmouth spokesperson
The think tank dude reads mostly the same stuff we do. For people not active on the Forumosa think tank, useful to have access to a guy like that, but hardly revelatory
Yup
Seeing the world’s public opinion turning against them, decoupling, new alliances against them, sanctions, high profile visits to Taiwan… i think it’s clear they overplayed their hand, time to backpedal a bit!
But Taiwan should still assume they’re going to come as soon as they can, and take steps accordingly
France wants the economic ties, anyways. Some poorer countries and more corrupt countries might still take the infrastructure deals
This is something I’d not heard about before this. It has a great explanation of the geopolitical shitshow toward the end. It makes me think that there are powers working to hamstring Russia in order to get the 'stans to rely less on them.
I’ll need to go read up again, but iirc, many of the countries didn’t have many options, so unless some other countries step up, they may have little choice.
I’ve met two groups of US military personal that were rotated into taiwan to train the troops. The first group was looking for drugs the entire time and trying to get stoned. The last message I got from one guy was, “this place is fucking trash, leaving tomorrow, cya.”
The second group was quite stoic and were much more serious. One of them said they are prepared to help Taiwan fight China because he formed a bond with the Taiwanese soldiers. Very disciplined guys, didn’t get drunk nor start any shit, one of the young guys was trying to get with a 50year old Taiwanese woman. He was all about it.
you can go sign up to go train in a realistic Taiwanese urban environment, even has a 7-11 with a dead mannequin outside it, (probably a foreigner who was drinking outside it prior to invasion) even has an Irish pub to make it even more realistic.
