Mike Pompeo to IMF: No US money to 'bail out' Chinese investors
by
Joel Gehrke
| July 30, 2018 06:46 PM
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the IMF may not repay Chinese investors.
(AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
Chinese investors shouldn’t expect to be repaid by a U.S.-backed international fund, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned Monday.
The issue arises from Pakistan’s dependence on China for infrastructure subsidies, which have left the South Asian nation deeply indebted to its Communist neighbor. About $16 billion of those pledges have come to fruition,
per industry estimates; that debt plays a role in Pakistan’s reported plan to request $12 billion from the International Monetary Fund.
“We will be watching what the IMF does,” Pompeo told CNBC. “There’s no rationale for IMF tax dollars — and associated with that, American dollars that are part of the IMF funding — for those to go to bail out Chinese bondholders or China itself.”
China has pledged $62 billion as part of the Belt and Road Initiative, which Western officials regard as a “predatory” method of expanding its influence over poorer countries. Most notably, China gained control over a port in Sri Lanka, an island country southeast of India that bestrides key international shipping lanes; an investment in Pakistan’s Gwadar Sea Port could give the Chinese military access to another facility west of India.
“We aspire to a regional order — independent nations that can defend their people and compete fairly in the international marketplace,” Pompeo
said during a Monday speech on the Indo-Pacific region. “We will help them. We will help them keep their people free from coercion or great power domination.”
That was a clear rebuke of Chinese lending practices, though Pompeo avoided mentioning the Communist power by name.
“We’re convinced that American engagement in the Indo-Pacific benefits all the nations in that region,” he told CNBC. “We’re not looking for dominance. We’re looking for partnerships. Others choose to behave differently. We want these to be commercially available projects led by the American private sector in a way that benefits the entire region and the world.”
Pompeo and other Trump administration officials unveiled a variety of Indo-Pacific initiatives on Monday at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The Overseas Private Investment Corporation also announced a trilateral partnership with Japan and Australia to expand infrastructure investment in the region.
“There’s new leadership in Pakistan, and we welcome engagement with them in a way that we think will benefit each of our two countries,” Pompeo said in the interview.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...imf-no-us-money-to-bail-out-chinese-investors
