From Mozambique to Tonga: The Chinese Debt Trap in Action

There is a simple, old, and effective technique known as the “payday loan” or the debt trap. This tactic can be used by one person against another, or by one nation against another.

The setup is clear: the party with more wealth and power presents itself as friendly, and offers a generous loan to the weaker party. The borrowing party spends the money, and is left with a debt larger than it can repay: by design, the greater party has lent a sum which the poorer party will be unable to pay back. The loan documents include provisions which stipulate that in the event of a default, the richer party is entitled to take certain actions against the nonremitting party.

In the case of a loan between nations, the terms of the lease will declare that the lender may seize the property, or take control of the property, perhaps by means of an occupying military force. This is precisely what China has implemented in its loans to various third-world countries.

In the first few decades of the twenty-first century, China has lent millions of dollars to the tiny Pacific nation of Tonga. Strategically located near Australia and New Zealand, and rich in certain natural resources like fish and minerals, Tonga is situated adjacent to certain crucial seaways which China would like to control. Tonga consists of approximately 45 inhabited islands and over a hundred uninhabited islands. The islands are small, and the nation’s total land area is around 289 square miles, or 748 square kilometers.

Given Tonga’s minimal economy, the amount of money it owes to China is relatively enormous. In 2019, journalist Nick Perry wrote:

Analysts say those loans could prove Tonga’s undoing. The country of 106,000 people owes some $108 million to China’s Export-Import bank, equivalent to about 25% of GDP.

China funded a multi-million dollar office complex for the Tongan government, and paid millions to fund the training of Tonga’s athletes in the runup to various international games, including the Pacific Games and the Olympics. China also funded the training of Tonga’s government employees in the latest administrative methods.

Can Tonga repay the money it owes to China? Tonga’s economy is not robust. It relies on gifts sent by emigrants — Tongans who’ve left their native country to find jobs abroad, and who then send money to the families in Tonga. Its products include handicrafts, and most of its agriculture is subsistence. It imports nearly all of its energy.

What will happen when Tonga is unable to make scheduled payments?

China has already been down this road with other nations, as Nick Perry writes:

In Sri Lanka, for example, the government was forced to hand over control of its Hambantota port as it struggles to repay loans it got from China to build the facility — a move that has given Beijing a strategic foothold within hundreds of miles of rival India.

Seeing China’s expansionist moves in Tonga, Australia and New Zealand have begun giving cash to various small nations in the South Pacific. Will these actions be enough to prevent China from gobbling up the tiny island countries?

China’s imperialistic ambitions are also visible in Africa.

A Chinese bank lent approximately $700 million dollars to the government of Mozambique. Like all banks in mainland China, this bank is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. The money was used to build a bridge from Mozambique’s capital city, Maputo, to one of its suburbs, Katembe. The cost for the construction of the bridge was seen by many observers as above the market rate. Also above the market rate was the interest charged by the Chinese bank. The Mozambican government opted for the loans despite the availability of other loans at lower rates: bribery is alleged.

Like Tonga, Mozambique now finds itself with loans which it might not be able to repay. What will happen then? China might assert an alleged right to repossess its property — in this case, the bridge. To claim and protect its property, China might imagine a right to station soldiers there.

Using the “debt trap,” China has found a way to turn small nations into its colonies. This economic colonialism is a powerful mechanism and helps China work toward its goal of a global empire.

Does Total War Lead to Total Peace?

The phrase “total war” is used by some historians to describe a type of war in which all the resources of society are mobilized and available for the war effort, in which the enemy’s civilian infrastructure and manufacturing base are targets in addition to the enemy’s military, and which has unconditional surrender as its goal. There are slightly differing definitions of this phrase, but the core concept is largely the same.

Exactly which wars in history can be so labeled is a nuanced debate with no final answers, but WW2 is generally seen as a clear example. Other candidates include the U.S. Civil War. Although the Thirty Years’ War (1618 - 1648) and WW1 have some aspects of total war, both were ended by negotiation.

It can be argued that some wars are asymmetrically total: The Korean War, starting in 1950, may have been a total war for North Korea, but not a total war for the United States. It is left as an exercise for the reader to determine which it was for South Korea.

Wars which are not total wars allow the civilian life of the belligerents to continue for the most part normally, tend to have more rules of engagement to limit the destructive potential of combat, restrict direct attacks to military targets, and are often susceptible to negotiated endings by means of treaties. The phrase ‘limited warfare’ describes such wars.

Does the peace following a total war differ significantly from the peace following other types of war?

It is noteworthy that WW2, frequently accepted as the prime example of total war, gave rise to good and friendly diplomatic relationships between the United States and Germany and between the United States and Japan. Similar conviviality is seen between the U.K., France, and Italy. The Soviet Union would, of course, constitute an exception to this trend.

Shockingly cruel warfare gave rise to shockingly good diplomacy for 80 years — and counting.

By contrast, a limited war with a negotiated settlement can give rise to a tenuous and short-lived peace. The negotiated ceasefire of 23 January 1973 in the Vietnam War was so flimsy that it never took full effect, and warfare resumed quickly.

The armistice of 27 July 1953 effectively ended the Korean War, but the tension between the two nations still prevents any diplomatic relations, and small fire still occasionally erupts along the DMZ. No peace treaty has yet been signed to officially end this war.

The numerous wars between a half-dozen or more nations in the Near East are so numerous and frequent as to constitute one long continuous war. Negotiated settlements and ceasefires are short-lived; the animosities are enduring.

Why would the horrific and inhumane nature of total war lead potentially to a deeper, lasting, and more sincere peace? The societies of Germany and Japan were substantively changed by WW2. American society probably was, too. The underlying oppositions which began the war were erased along with the old form of society. The new form of the society wasn’t the generator of the conflict.

The paradoxical conclusion is plausible: that the worst form of war might produce the best form of peace.

People and Ideas on the Move: 2000 B.C. – 250 B.C.

At various times in history, large groups of people migrate — move to a new place to live. These migrations — called Völkerwanderungen by scientists — change the world. Around 1700 B.C., a group called the Indo-Europeans moved from their homeland north of the Caucasus mountains. We don’t know why they left. Splitting into different tribes, they moved into many parts of the world — areas we now call England, Scandinavia, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Russia, Iran (Persia), India, Turkey, and others. These tribes became those modern nations, and created their languages and cultures. Their homeland — grasslands north of the Caucasus — is therefore the homeland to most of the world’s great cultures, and those languages are visibly related. The word for ‘mother’ is similar in languages such as Persian, Sanskrit, English, German, and Russian.

One of these tribes was called the Hittites. They occupied Anatolia, which is the same area we now call ‘Turkey’ and ‘Asia Minor.’ From 2000 B.C. onward, they were a major power, dominating Mesopotamia. The Hittites developed chariots and iron weapons. The Hittite Empire ended in 1190 B.C. The unrelated Turkish language replaced the Hittite language in the area.

Another Indo-European tribe was the Aryans. They settled in the Indus River valley, and spoke the Sanskrit language. Their society developed a strict system of four castes. Their literature included ‘Vedas’ (magical writings) and the ‘Mahabharata’ (a semi-historical epic). Gradually, the prayers and other texts in the Vedas were formed into the polytheistic system we call ‘Hinduism.’ Between 750 B.C. and 550 B.C., the Hindu understandings of the Vedas were written down; these texts are called ‘Upanishads,’ and are another important text for Hindus. One Hindu belief is that people will be reincarnated, and that the quality of the next future life is based on the qualities of one’s deeds in this life: the ‘karma’ principle. Hinduism also produced other religions.

Mahavira, who lived from 599 B.C. to 527 B.C., founded Jainism, which believes that every object has a soul, and should not be harmed. Jains are careful to avoid stepping on small insects, because even they are thought to have souls.

Siddhartha Gautama, who died in 483 B.C., founded Buddhism. He saw that every human encounters suffering and looked for a way to have peace about this fact. He encouraged people to meditate, to reach ‘enlightenment,’ and to follow his ‘four noble truths.’ In addition, he also taught about the ‘eightfold path.’ He promised his followers that they would reach ‘nirvana’ this way — a state of mind free from suffering. He also taught reincarnation. The doctrines, or teachings, of Buddhism are called the ‘dharma’ and they are found in a variety of Buddhist books.

Both Hinduism and Buddhism affected society, and affected the way people thought about each other. People felt that relieving other people’s pain and suffering was a way to earn good karma and work off the bad karma, and have a chance to be reincarnated into a better next life. Yet they also felt that they had to allow themselves and others to suffer, because that also was a way to work off bad karma and pay debts from previous lives. Ending a person’s suffering prevents him from paying off his debt and from moving up a level in the next life.

Thousands of miles to the west, a different cultural development was happening: two civilizations, the Minoans and the Phoenicians, organized trading through the Mediterranean Sea. Ships began to carry imports and exports in all directions.

From around 2000 B.C. to 1400 B.C., the Minoans lived on the island of Crete, just south of Greece. They exported pottery, swords, and metal objects; their culture also spread to nearby countries. Their capital city was Knossos. Like other early civilizations, they conducted human sacrifice. Their ruler was King Minos.

About 1100 B.C., another culture became important in the trading network. The Phoenicians lived at the eastern end of the Mediterranean; their leading cities were Tyre and Sidon. Expert shipbuilders and navigators, they sailed west into the Atlantic, and may have explored places from England to the southern tip of Africa. Phoenicians sailed from town to town along the coasts of Africa and Europe, buying and selling. But their greatest invention was the alphabet. Previous forms of writing — hieroglyphs and cuneiform — were inefficient. With the alphabet, people could read and write quicker. When Phoenicia was captured by the Assyrians in 842 B.C., many of the Phoenicians escaped to the west and started a new city-state, Carthage. Phoenician sea trading routes were also linked to various land trading routes which eventually allowed goods to be traded with places as far away as India and Afghanistan.

By 2000 B.C., the city-state Ur had developed into an important trading center. It also had schools, and groups of children were taught to read and write. Around this time, a man named Abraham left Ur and migrated with his family northwest along the Euphrates to Haran. Haran was a major trading city, and a stopping point on the route through the Fertile Crescent. From there, Abraham and his family travelled southwest to the area around the Jordan River valley, an area called Palestine or Canaan, and inhabited by Phoenicians, Philistines, and Canaanites. Abraham’s family were ‘Hebrews’ — this word identifies them by culture and language; they were monotheists. Abraham is also the first person recorded in history to reject the practice of human sacrifice.

Abraham adopted a nomadic lifestyle, moving with his family from time to time to find fresh pastures for animals which were his source of income. Abraham and his wife Sarah had a son, Isaac. Isaac and his wife Rebecca had twin sons, Jacob and Esau. Jacob, also called Israel, had twelve sons and a daughter. Soon Abraham and his family had become a tribe. The whole clan — by this time Abraham and Isaac were dead — moved to Egypt, where they would remain for approximately 400 years. As the years passed, the Hebrews became more numerous, and they became slaves in Egypt. Sometime after 1500 B.C., a Hebrew named Moses led the slaves out of Egypt.

The Hebrews were happy to be free, but none of them had leadership experience. In order to successfully organize into a society, they needed structure. Camped at the foot of Mount Sinai, they received a set of laws. More than merely rules, these laws helped to create civilization for the Hebrews. The Hebrews understood themselves to have a ‘covenant’ with God. A ‘covenant’ is a promise, an agreement, or a contract. They understood themselves to have been rescued from slavery, and would show their gratitude by following God’s laws. Now that the Hebrews were a nation, they would be called ‘Israelites’ — this word identifies them politically. They returned to Canaan where Abraham had lived. They were organized into twelve tribes, descended from Jacob’s twelve sons.

The laws given at Sinai had several unique features, making them different from other Mesopotamian societies. These laws valued human life, called upon the Israelites to look out for the vulnerable people in society, gave a better legal and social status to women, and reduced the harshness of slavery. This is in contrast to the Babylonian laws of Hammurabi. For approximately 400 years, the Israelites lived with these laws in a form of government called a ‘tribal confederation.’

Spiritual guidance was given by prophets in Israel, who had three functions. First, as social critics, they pointed out injustices and called for reform. Second, as spokesmen and spokeswomen for God, they announced messages from Him. Third, they occasionally predicted the future. Shortly before the year 1000 B.C., the Israelites instituted a new form of government, a monarchy. Saul was the first Israelite king, David the second, and Solomon the third. After the death of Solomon and a brief civil war in 922 B.C., the Israelite kingdom split into a southern half, called Judah, and a northern half, called Israel. In 722 B.C., the northern kingdom was conquered by the Assyrians, who scattered its people across many countries. In 586 B.C., the southern kingdom was conquered by the Babylonians, who took all its people together to Babylon, where they were servants. In 539 B.C., the Persian king Cyrus conquered Babylon, and set the Israelites free to return to the southern kingdom.

The southern kingdom (called ‘Judah’ or ‘Judea’) was, however, not completely free. It was a part of the Persian Empire. As different empires rose and fell, they would later be part of the Greek Empire and then the Roman Empire.

During the years of the Babylonian Captivity, the people of Judah developed their spiritual outlook. They studied the laws of Moses — called the Torah — and the writings of the Hebrew prophets. The Torah was combined with these other writings to form a larger book, the Tanakh. The people of Judah would now be called ‘Jews’ — this word indicates their religion.

As they transitioned from Hebrews to Israelites to Jews, they formed a culture with unique features. They abandoned human sacrifice, polytheism, and eventually polygamy. They had a law code which was proactive instead of reactive, had a moral dimension as well as a legal dimension, and reduced the frequency of capital punishment. They abandoned the magical manipulation of other Mesopotamian societies, and instead embraced a religion of relationship with the deity.

Early River Valley Civilizations: 3500 B.C. – 450 B.C.

Early civilizations began near rivers, where there was a source of water for agriculture, a source of fish, and the possibility of barges for transportation. Dynasties — royal families — ruled ‘city-states’ which were cities functioning as countries. Priests often had political influence. City-states often included a few small villages and the farmland surrounding them. The ‘Fertile Crescent’ is Mesopotamia plus the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea. In Mesopotamia, city-states like Babylon, Akkad, Ur, Nineveh, Ebla, and Haran dealt with unpredictable rains and floods by digging irrigation ditches, dealt with their landscape’s lack of natural defenses by building walls around their cities, and dealt with a the region’s shortage of natural resources by trading with distant peoples. As goods were imported and exported, people learned about other types of music, food, and art — cultural diffusion. Around 2350 B.C., a ruler in Akkad named Sargon united the city and region of Akkad with the region of Sumer. Sumer’s area included several city-states in the southern end of Mesopotamia; Akkad was northwest from Sumer. Sargon created an ‘empire’ — a collection of kingdoms. This empire became known as the Babylonian Empire, with its capital city in Babylon. In 1792 B.C., Hammurabi became king of Babylon, and issued one of the earliest known law codes. A written law code is important because the crimes and their punishments are clearly defined so that everyone knows them. The details of Hammurabi’s code give us insights into Babylon’s culture.

In developmental stages of these early civilizations, there is evidence of a difference between a pre-religious stage and a religious stage. The core of the pre-religious stage consists of two desires: the desire to manipulate nature and the desire to explain the phenomenal world. The attempt to manipulate the world is magic: the attempt to produce better weather, good crops, and the fertility of the soil, the livestock, and the humans. This magic also extended to attempting to secure military victories. Sacrifices of various kinds were thought to persuade the deities, or to appease them, and secure from them the desired benefits. The greater the need — e.g., in cases of famine — the more urgent the need to bribe the gods, and this resulted in human sacrifice, which is evident in the earliest phases of nearly every civilization.

In this pre-religious phase, the desire to understand the world led to myths and mythology. For these purposes, a ‘myth’ will be defined as a narrative composed to serve as an explanation. It is clear that some myths are true and some myths are false; this is in opposition to the modern slang usage of ‘myth’ which is understood to mean a falsehood. Myths were generated to answer questions.

The pre-religious phase, then, can be summed up as myth and magic.

The religious phase discards magic’s attempt to manipulate the natural world and instead fosters a sense of acceptance; attempts, such as human sacrifice, to influence a deity are abandoned.

Recognizing that human reason has limits, the religious phase acknowledges that humans might not be able to find answers to some questions, and produces fewer myths.

The centerpiece of the religious phase is a relationship with the deity, instead of attempts to explain or persuade the deity.

In Egypt, the Nile river flooded predictably. Famine was rare and the food supply was steady and plentiful. Deserts served as a natural protection from military attack. At the northern end of the Nile, where it empties into the Mediterranean Sea, it forms a large delta; the city of Memphis is located there. South of Egypt, the Nile flows through an area which has been called Nubia, Ethiopia, or Cush. Originally two kingdoms — Northern Egypt and Southern Egypt — the Egyptian Empire arose around 3000 B.C. when a king named Narmer united the two. The kings of Egypt were called ‘pharaohs’ and Egyptian culture believed them to be gods. They organized the building of the famous massive pyramids. Egyptians mummified their dead. Their system of writing — ‘hieroglyphics’ — was recorded both with inscriptions on stone and on papyrus. Egyptians were good at mathematics and astronomy, and these helped them predict the Nile’s floods.

It is not certain whether individual Egyptians internalized and embraced the cultural belief that the pharaohs were gods. The Egyptians acted as if the pharaohs were gods, and treated the pharaohs that way. But it is possible that many Egyptians saw this as a ceremonial and political duty, and did not have the corresponding quasi-religious belief.

India’s two main rivers are the Ganges and the Indus. In addition to unpredictable flooding, India’s weather is governed by monsoons — winds which bring hot dry weather for half a year, and then rainy weather for half a year. The earliest culture in India is the Harappan culture. Not much remains of it, because around 1750 B.C, a Sanskrit culture — called the ‘Aryans’ — invaded India; this later culture would almost completely replace the Harappan civilization.

China’s geography is defined by two large parallel rivers, both flowing eastward to the sea. In the north is the ‘Huang He,’ also called the ‘Yellow River.’ In the south is the ‘Yangtze,’ also called the Chang Jiang. The first Chinese dynasty was the Xia, led by a ruler named Yu; he designed irrigation projects to prevent the dangerous flood of the Yellow River. This made for a steady food supply. The next dynasty was the Shang dynasty, from around 1700 B.C. to 1027 B.C., also in the north. From 1027 B.C. to 256 B.C., the Zhou dynasty ruled. The Zhou organized a type of feudal system, in which the king lent land to nobles, who farmed it; in return, they owed the king part of the crops, and owed him military assistance in times of war. The Chinese developed coins to improve business, and developed techniques to make iron, which is stronger than bronze. They used the phrase ‘Mandate of Heaven’ to describe a good king’s right to rule; an unfair king would lose the mandate. As different dynasties came and went, a pattern developed: new dynasties brought prosperity and justice and became strong, but eventually became corrupt and were overthrown, making room for another new dynasty. In the last years of the Zhou dynasty, the emperor had little control, and China became a collection of independent kingdoms competing with each other. This is called the era of the ‘Warring States.’

In the cycle of the rise and fall of successive dynasties, one aspect of the phase of the fall was increasing taxation, which led to decreased popularity and eventually to disfavor among the majority of the subjects, leaving the monarch susceptible to a rebellion.

In their early stages, all these river valley civilizations conducted human sacrifice, hoping to appease their idols, to bring good weather, to avoid famine and starvation, and to gain military victories.

The move from hieroglyphs and pictograms to alphabetic writing was an advancement. The advantage of alphabetic writing is that it can be learned quicker, and the acts of reading and writing can be performed quicker.

Other achievements of early civilizations included the moves from polytheism to monotheism, from polygamy to monogamy, and the move away from human sacrifice.

Rebooting the Concentration Camps: How the Soviets Continued the Holocaust

Students are familiar with the basic facts of the Holocaust: how the Nazis forced millions of Jews into concentration camps, and then murdered many of them. These victims came from various countries. Although a relatively small number of the murdered Jews were German citizens, many more of them were German Jews — so classified because, even though they’d never set foot in Germany and did not have German citizenship, they were culturally German and spoke Yiddish. Yiddish is a Germanic language and historians estimate that 85% of the Jews who were murdered were Yiddish speakers.

What is, however, less well-known is the history of the concentration camps after early 1945. As WW2 drew to a close, the Soviet army, advancing toward Germany and eventually into Germany from the east, encountered and liberated the camps. The western Allies, advanced from the west, encountered fewer camps. One by one, all the camps were discovered by the victorious armies.

Newspapers and radios around the world delivered the shocking and horrifying details of the atrocities which the Nazis had committed in the camps.

But what happened to the concentration camps after May 1945 — after the German military surrendered, and the fighting in Europe came to an end? After a burst of coverage in the news, when photographers and reporters were allowed into the camps along with the general public to see for themselves what had happened?

Although the Holocaust remained in the news, with the Nuremberg Trials in late 1945 and most of 1946, and photos of the camps accompanied the news stories of the trials, the camps themselves faded from attention: the images were file photos from the liberations in early 1945. Reporters and photographers were not flocking to the camps any longer, and the general public wasn’t either.

With the camps largely out of sight, the Soviet Socialists began to renovate them one by one. The majority of the concentration camps were located in the areas occupied by the Soviet Army: East Germany, Poland, and other parts of eastern Europe.

Those who’ve read about the Holocaust will recognize the names of the camps which the Soviet Socialists renovated: Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, etc.

The Soviets updated and improved Nazi concentration camps in Germany and in Poland. Then they put these camps back into operation. The camps which the Nazis had used to kill millions of Jews were functioning again. They would do so for another five years.

The Soviets rounded up a variety of people — those deemed in any way an obstacle to the Soviet military dictatorship — imprisoned them in the camps, tortured them, and murdered them. This was often done without any legal proceedings or trials. Sometimes the people simply disappeared; their friends, family, and neighbors had no clue as to their whereabouts.

Historians Ursula Haertl, Agnes Nattermüller, and Roswitha Burwick describe one specific example at Buchenwald:

From 1945 to 1950, the Soviet occupation forces used the area of the former concentration camp as an internment camp (Special Camp No. 2). The persons sent to this camp mainly included members of the NSDAP (i.e., the fascist party), officials in positions close to the National-Socialist regime, but also people arrested arbitrarily. Among the total of approximately 28,000 internees, more than 7,000 died mainly as a consequence of neglect and undernourishment. The dead were buried in mass graves north of the camp and near the railway station.

The example of Buchenwald was repeated at the other camps. The Soviets refurbished and used the Nazi concentration camps for five years in the territory of East Germany. In Poland, they not only used the Nazi camps, but also built a few new ones of their own.

The horrors of the concentration camps didn’t end when the Nazis surrendered. The Nazis were gone: they’d been sentenced to prison, or executed for war crimes, or rehabilitated, or escaped to South America.

The Nazis were gone, but the Soviet Socialists kept the camps running for another five years. Exact numbers are debated, but in any case, the Soviets murdered hundreds of thousands of Polish, German, and other victims in the renovated Nazi concentration camps.

The horrors of the Holocaust continued long after the Nazis were gone, long after WW2 was over, and long after the rest of the world thought that the brutality had ended.

Trends in European Car Manufacturing from 2006 to 2024: Eastern Europe Emerges

Following the collapse of Soviet Socialism in eastern Europe in 1990-1991, the economies in each of the individual nations — Poland, East Germany, Hungary, etc. — endured the shock treatment as the old communist systems collapsed, temporarily plunging the markets into chaos and short-term hardship. Then began the long ascent into healthy and vital growth, raising the standard of living in those countries for lower-income level workers.

After less than a decade, the eastern European nations were ready to be significant players in the global market. Companies from western Europe were eager to establish themselves in the East, with its lower real estate costs and large labor supply.

By November 2006, John Tagliabue could write:

For Slovakia, the recent inauguration of an $890 million automobile factory was a major event. The prime minister and other government officials attended. French executives from Peugeot Citroën, which built the factory, flew into the tiny town of Trnava, where the sprawling factory is expected to employ up to 3,500 people and churn out as many as 300,000 compact cars a year. After the collapse of Communism in 1989, many foreign carmakers rushed to acquire local carmakers or build their own factories in countries like Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Romania and the Czech Republic.

By the end of 2022, Slovakia would be home to four car assembly plants as well as several part supplier plants, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA).

The Slovakian automobile industry would be producing 12.6 cars per worker by the end of 2023, making it the second most efficient car industry in Europe, as stated by ACEA.

This was the vision back in 2006: the eastern European nations were growing into the world economy, and while recovering from the Soviet Socialist era, they still had advantages and resources which allowed them to complete, as John Tagliabue wrote:

That relative trickle, though, is now a flood. The money has been pouring in, and the pace and frenzy is prompting talk of Europe’s auto industry shifting from west to east.

By 2010, the Czech Republic could nearly double its production over last year, to more than a million cars. Indeed, as a whole, Eastern Europe has become Europe’s backyard manufacturing center, and it could be producing 3.4 million cars annually by 2010, a 33 percent jump over 2005, according to forecasts by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Even Russia’s production is expected to rise to 1.6 million cars a year from 1.2 million now.

The Czech Republic’s efficiency was, however, half of Slovakia’s at the end of 2023. The Czech automobile sector produced 6.3 cars per worker.

In Slovakia, at the end of 2021, 16% of all the country’s manufacturing workers were in the auto industry, making it the most auto-oriented economy in Europe.

In the 35 years of post-Soviet growth, there have been setbacks. In 2022, Slovakia produced 970,275 motor vehicles, all of which were passenger cars. In that same year, the Czech Republic produced 1,221,246 vehicles, of which 1,214,746 were passenger cars.

Despite these impressive numbers, it was in western Europe where the largest per-country numbers of vehicles were manufactured, with Germany in first place in 2022. The former Soviet-bloc countries came in at fourth place (the Czech Republic) and fifth place (Slovakia).

While total European car manufacturing peaked in 2017, with an output of around 14,914,629 units, Slovakian car manufacturing peaked in 2019, with 1,107,902 units. The decline in European totals began pre-pandemic, while Slovakia was going strong until the pandemic.

While Slovakia has returned to almost pre-pandemic levels, with an output of 1,080,000 in 2023, Europe as a whole has not returned to its 2017 peak, manufacturing 10,890,123 cars in 2022.

Industry trends and market trends are constantly changing, but it can be said that eastern European nations have become major players in the auto industry during the last 35 years.

Reasons to Be Cheerful — Part 6

The psychological configuration of the human mind is such that it has a preference for bad news. Swedish scholar Hans Rosling discovered that humans are more likely to believe bad news than good news. When people hear bad news, they quickly internalize it, and proceed to think about what caused this problem, who’s to blame for this problem, what people should do to fix this problem, etc.

When people hear or read good news, they are often skeptical, find it boring, or find ways to minimize what’s encouraging about the good news: “Yes, but …”

Rosling’s work is carried on by his son and daughter-in-law, who created the Gapminder Foundation to further his research.

In the book Factfulness Rosling listed a number of encouraging facts about the world, and studied people’s tendency to ignore, disbelieve, or downplay salutary facts. People readily believe and amplify falsehoods, when those falsehoods are depressing and discouraging. People have a predisposition to embrace propositions which ignite sadness or anger.

Among the uplifting facts listed in the book are:

• In the year 1800, over 190 countries in the world allowed slavery, which Rosling defines as a situation in which “forced labor is legal or practiced by the state.” In 2017, fewer than ten countries had legal systems which permitted slavery.
• In 1979, oil accidentally spilled from tanker ships into the sea amounted to 636,000 tons. After a consistent downward trend, only 6,000 tons were spilled in 2016.
• The price of solar panels in 2016, measured in terms of dollars per watt produced, was one one-hundredth of what it was in 1976.
• In 2016, new HIV infections worldwide were fewer than half of what they were in 1996.
• In 1800, 44% of children died before their fifth birthday. In 2016, only 4% of children died before that point.
• After the United States developed the catalytic converter in the 1970s, the number of countries using leaded gasoline fell from more than 190 in 1986 to fewer than 5 in 2017.
• Measured as a ratio of deaths to miles flown, plane crash deaths in the era of 2012 to 2016 were less than one two-thousandth (0.04%) of what they were in the years between 1929 and 1933.
• Some of Rosling’s definitions are imprecise or ambiguous, but the numbers are still encouraging. He defines “child labor” as “children aged 5 - 14 who work full time under bad conditions.” Whatever ‘bad’ might mean, it’s good that only 10% of children were subject to such labor in 2012, compared to 28% of children in 1950.
• Likewise, the phrase “deaths from disaster” is somewhat vague: what counts as a ‘disaster’? But in any case, those deaths fell from 971,000 per year in the 1930s to 72,000 annually in the years between 2010 and 2016.
• Air quality has improved. In 1970, for every person on the planet, 38 kg of SO₂ particles were emitted in smoke. In 2010, only 14 kg of such smoke particles were emitted per person.
• The planet’s food supply continues to grow quicker than the population. Over the last five decades, the world has produced more food annually than is needed to feed the earth’s entire population. The yield of cereal grain per acre more than doubled between 1961 and 2014.
• The global literacy rate went from 10% in the year 1800 to 86% in 2016.
• “Child Cancer Survival,” defined as “5 year survival of those diagnosed before age 20, with best treatment,” went from 58% in 1975 to 80% in 2010.
• Rosling also lists statistics showing significant increases in the “share of people with some access to electricity” and the “share of people with a cellphone,” as well as the “share of people using the internet.” The number of scholarly articles published per year also continues to increase.

Rosling is certainly not arguing that the world has no problems. The problems are real and significant. But the world is also experiencing some salutary trends.

The innate inclination of the human mind to focus more on problems than on benefits. The structure of the news media, relying as it does on using strong emotions like fear and anger to elicit clicks on websites and keep eyes on continuously updated posts, amplifies this already troublesome human tendency.

To obtain a more accurate understanding of the world, the public must develop an intentional and disciplined habit of looking for good news. It’s there.