China’s $1 Billion Sweetheart Road to Nowhere in Montenegro
Commentary
Montenegro, a tiny Balkan nation of under a million inhabitants and about $5.5 billion in GDP (2019), borrowed $1 billion from China to pay China, to build its first highway, that is now stalled after reaching only 24 percent of its planned length. If that makes your head spin, it’s because China is running circles around this poor little country in Europe’s southeast. And you know what? That country reminds me of America.
Plans for the 170-kilometer (106-mile) highway include 90 tunnels and 40 bridges, all to be built by a Chinese infrastructure company. Now that Montenegro can’t pay back the loan, construction stopped, Europe refused to bail the country out, and clauses in the contract could give China “sovereignty of certain parts of the land,” according to a recent investigation by Hans von der Brelie in EuroNews.