President Robert Mugabe yesterday blasted the United States for extending sanctions on Zimbabwe and said that Washington was now at the mercy of Beijing. He said people scoffed at him when he announced that Zimbabwe was now “Looking East” to China, the country’s all-weather friend from the days of the liberation struggle, but everyone was now looking up to China, now the world’s second largest economy. “So, it’s not just Mugabe’s Zimbabwe and Zimbabweans looking East; even America is looking East, even developed Europe is looking East. You go to America and look at the goods that they have there. They have taken even all their technology,” Mugabe was quoted as saying. Speaking at the commissioning of medical equipment sourced through a loan from Chinayesterday, Mugabe said China was now sustaining the United States. “It’s China which sustained America — I want this loud enough for Obama to hear — sustained America during their economic crisis through the bonds, American bonds which they bought, trillion dollars worth of bonds,” he was quoted by The Herald as saying. “If they (Chinese) had decided to abandon those (bonds) and decided that they needed to be paid straight on — but Americans did not have money to pay for those trillion bonds which the Chinese had acquired — no they let them and we were not happy that China let America go free….They are actually now prisoner to China and we are praying that the Chinese will not demand payment that time, but, well, you heard what happened; so now they are back to the same position, but again they are very dependent on China. So they are now — the Chinese — really economically the strongest country in the world in my own reckoning. But no, they are humble enough; they say no we are not that high yet. The humility of a winner.”
(603 VIEWS)
