I’m an easy prey for YouTube’s algorithms, and I was just presented with an excerpt from an address by Yanis Varoufakis to the Cambridge Forum in Massachusetts on May 9, 2018. Here’s his full speech and Q&A session: 🎞️ Yanis Varoufakis: Is Capitalism Devouring Democracy?

But what caught my attention was this 8-minute excerpt reposted a couple of days ago: 🎞️ Yanis Varoufakis: China is Far More Humanistic Than the USA. This sounds crazy, right?

Now, there’s a lot that could be said about Varoufakis. There’s a lot China can be criticized for. And Varoufakis’s naive view of China is also a subject that could be debated. I won’t enter in any such fields. I’ll just provide a better transcript of the said excerpt, merely as food for thought.

Woman: I’ve been very concerned lately about China and sort of their… We have transferred so much money from our economy over to China by buying all those things and supporting their economy over there so they could make more and more money. They are now all over Africa, you know, buying things and investing over there and getting those countries dependent on them and supporting, you know, non-democratic people, and I’m just…

Varoufakis: Like whom? We’re in a country that supports Saudi Arabia.

Woman: Yeah, that’s true, right.

Varoufakis: So suddenly we have a problem with, you know, superpowers supporting non-democratic people?

Woman: Yes. I mean, yes, I do. But I also am just concerned that we’ve sort of created the economic power that China sort of has now, and they’re using it… I fear they’re going to be using it against us eventually and against the better interests of a lot of people.

Varoufakis: Allow me to put your mind to rest.

Woman: Okay, great.

Varoufakis: You shouldn’t worry about that.

Woman: Okay.

Varoufakis: It’s very simple. [Everyone laughs.] And let me explain why you shouldn’t worry about that, but please continue.

Woman: Well, I mean, they’re… you know, they’re… they’re in Africa. They’re lending money to countries to build ports and different infrastructure.

Varoufakis: To build what?

Woman: Ports.

Varoufakis: What port? What’s wrong with that?

Woman: And well, because…

Varoufakis: Countries that need ports, get ports.

Woman: …but they’re making people dependent on. I mean, I know it’s the same thing that we’ve done, which is…

Varoufakis: No, it’s not.

Woman: …around the world.

Varoufakis: They are far more humanistic than the United States ever was.

Woman: Really? Okay.

Varoufakis: Absolutely.

Woman: Great. So…

Varoufakis: Let me give you an example. Of course they are trying… they are peddling for influence.

Woman: Yeah.

Varoufakis: Yeah? Uh… but they are non-interventionist. Absolutely non-interventionist in a way that Europeans, the West has never managed to fathom.

Woman: But I have a feeling they have a longer-term thought process that’s more interventionist…

Varoufakis: All right, all right. But, but let’s judge what we see. Let’s start at the beginning. The Chinese never asked Apple to go to Shenzhen and produce all the iPhones. It was Steve Jobs that decided that. Yeah?

Woman: Mhm.

Varoufakis: Uh… it was not China that… um… went to Washington, DC, and demanded that they buy a third of your national debt. If they hadn’t bothered, you would be in serious trouble.

Woman: Mhm.

Varoufakis: Okay. Uh, number three, I did allude to this in my talk. If in 2008, China had not cranked up their credit bubble, you would be in a new Great Depression now.

Woman: Mhm.

Varoufakis: So, China, the United States, and the European Union are absolutely synergistic, and they need one another in a way that, if we fail to acknowledge and to nurture, uh… billions of people, including the majority of the people in this country, are going to suffer.

Now. I am not going to sit here, stand here, and defend China and the Chinese Communist Party. I already made some negative remarks about the Chinese Communist Party in referring to, you know, their attitudes as being, uh… compatible with those of Wolfgang Schäuble [wrong captioning on all videos I’ve seen].

My concern about China is the authoritarian manner in which the Chinese regime is treating the Chinese people. As a democrat, I have a problem with this.

Mind you, I have to tell you that, from my understanding of China, it’s a very interesting social experiment in the sense that at the local level, the regional level, you now have a boisterous democracy. At the local and regional level, yeah. With even, with… uh… popular success stories in overthrowing local authorities, local bureaucrats who have been corrupt, who have been this, have been that, who have been the other.

When it comes to the influence of China outside its borders, I have to say firstly, it’s quite remarkable that they don’t seem to have any military um… ambitions.

Secondly, Africa. I’ll give you an example — a specific example. Ethiopia. 2004, because I happened to be there, and I have some first-person, first-hand experience of it, they went into Ethiopia.

I’ll tell you why they went into Ethiopia. Because they suspected it was oil. Because China is a major industrial power, but it lacks primary resources.

Now. Instead of going into Africa with troops, colonially, destroying the country, killing people like the West has done for the last 100 years, what they did was they went to Addis Ababa, and they said to the government, “We would like… we can see you have problems with your infrastructure. We would like to build some new airports, upgrade your railway system, create a telephone system, and rebuild your roads. And we’ll do this all for free. No strings attached. We don’t want anything from you.”

And they did. Why did they do it? Because this is soft power. Now, because they knew that if oil is discovered — and it was discovered later — then of course the Ethiopian government will be much more open to Chinese oil companies coming there.

They have never combined their investment with imperialistic views — I, you know, when I was minister of finance, I had a very interesting experience with COSCO, one of the Chinese national companies that in the end bought the port of Piraeus.

When I moved into the ministry, I found a contract from the previous government that they had already sold the port of Piraeus for a pittance and under ridiculous conditions to the Chinese — under the guidance, of course, of the European Union and the International Monetary Fund as well.

And, in other words, I was, as a minister, I was bound to a particular deal that was terrible for Greece. And I went to the Chinese and discussed it with them. And I was really astonished. I said to them, “Look, you’re paying too little. You’re not committing to a sufficient level of investment. And you are treating our workers as fodder. You’re effectively subcontracting labor to horrible companies that exploit the workers, and I can’t deal with this.” And effectively, I proposed to them to renegotiate the contract. So instead of getting 67% of the shares of the port, they would get with the same price 51. The remaining shares would go into the Greek pension fund system in order to bolster the capitalization of the public pensions. “Secondly, I want you to commit to 180 million euros of investment within 12 months. And thirdly, proper collective bargaining with the trade unions and no subcontracting of labor.”

And to my astonishment, they said, “Okay.” Can you imagine if that was a German company or an American company? That’s why I’m saying I don’t think you should worry.

Woman: Okay, I won’t. Thank you.

The only comment I’ll make is about the time when he mentioned the name of Wolfgang Schäuble. All sorts of retards, not understanding what he said (because they were also missing the context, and because they’re plain idiots) transcribed it randomly, from “Adolf Hitler” (in this video) to “Afghan soil” (on LinkedIn). Yeah, this is the world we’re living in.

On a funny note, China’s People’s Daily found about this in 2021: China ‘more humanistic’ than US when building ports in Africa: ex-Greek minister.