I want to talk of something that is quite unfamiliar to the western world. The idea of cooperative development for mutual benefit between nations. There are reasons for that of course, which I don’t intend to go into here.
China has long been in the business of providing meaningful and stable infrastructure solutions for the betterment of the lives of not only its own peoples but also in other cooperative ventures around the world.
For example, in 2014, China financed and built the Mombasa-Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) in Kenya, providing stable transport since its opening in 2017 between Kenya’s major coastal port and its capital city. Hmm… I wonder…. How many such cooperative facilities has the west involved itself with over recent times? Or in fact ever?
Xinhua tells the story, mainly in pictures (the equivalent of many thousand words)…
‘Chinese-built SGR provides stable freight service in Kenya’ – XinhuaNet – Editor: huaxia 2022-07-06
China of course does not rest on its laurels. The business of forging friendships goes on continually through the Belt & Road Initiative – unmatched (and unmatchable) elsewhere – as a result of China’s meteoric rise in economic terms to now be the world’s leading economy. The most recently completed example of that endeavour (while others are in progress) being the China-Laos Railway, which is already proving to be of immense benefit to both countries as part of the China-Laos Economic Corridor. Commencing in December of 2021, this has again been a very long term commitment – beginning in 2015 and still in process of further development.
The story is told here in video…
Allow your imagination to run with ideas as to how far this concept can go.
It is probably already planned to go there.
Also ask yourself if you think China is in any way interested in the petty imaginings of its western neighbours. I doubt they lose any sleep at all on that count.
There are other nations, mostly allies or friends of China, free nations capable of independent thought and action, who are also in the same cooperative development business as China. But I do not want to take anything away here from China’s obvious lead in this field. Which I think has only fostered and encouraged such growth through its own economic success.
Don’t waste your time looking for any equivalent practices among western interests. There is nothing comparable. In fact it is probably true to say there is none at all.
Not Something Else 
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