My Take | China should stay out of the war, but help the ‘global south’
- Russia’s war in Ukraine and Western-led counter financial warfare have caused food and commodity inflations, and a looming debt crisis in dozens of low-income countries. Beijing can help
China can and should raise its diplomatic profile and earn the world’s goodwill, but not by joining the West to take on Russia. Leave the war to the Russians, the Ukrainians, the Europeans and Americans. There are already too many cooks in the kitchen.
But China can help save the world. How? By helping those developing countries whose populations are hurt most economically by the Russian invasion and the Western-led financial war on Moscow. By weaponising the global economy, this financial equivalent of a military campaign led by the West is already causing collateral damage around the world, but especially on low-income countries most reliant on the import of food and commodities.
China should help with a massive aid and interest-free (or low-interest) loans programme for the “global south”. No doubt Washington and its allies will complain about China’s “debt-trap diplomacy”. Well, they are free to help out, too, especially when their financial war is contributing to the suffering and hardships in low-income countries. But, to be fair, the primary responsibility for the economic dislocations, besides the awful human suffering, rests with Putin’s Russia.
Now if China and the West end up competing to help poor nations yet to have recovered from the Covid-19 pandemic, all the better.