“Those who come with wheat, millet, corn or milk, they are not helping us. Those who really want to help us can give us ploughs, tractors, fertilizers, insecticides, watering cans, drills and dams. That is how we would define food aid.” - Sankara
That's where China comes into the picture.
Are you against this delivery then?
No but we must be critical of every policy like this, if its not followed by tools and know-how, its just bribery/political capital.
Let us consider that every ton of food sent as humanitarian aid by Russia is a ton of food not purchased from the US. Every ton of food not purchased from the US is x dollars that did not have to be either borrowed (with conditions including economic restructuring) or earned by selling goods and industries at pennies on the dollar to Western consumers. It does not solve the issue of developing productive forces in the target nations, but its impact is more anti-imperial than it might initially appear.
To be fair- Russia's industrial capacity is not what it once was- and what remains, is geared towards something else entirely at the moment. China can provide the ploughs and tractors and infrastructure, wheat (and oil) is what Russia has the means to provide the world, currently.
Part of the whole "shock therapy" was specifically around destroying Russia's own indigenous means of producing these things (manufactured goods like tractors) and making it dependent on western industry instead.
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