Visa’s China entry exposes geopolitical financialisation: US-China tech diplomacy as neoliberal infrastructure race
Original framing: “Visa’s China approval a ‘direct outcome’ of Trump-Xi summit, Beijing says” — South China Morning Post
The voices of cross-border workers—such as *African diaspora* remittance senders, *Southeast Asian* gig economy platform users, or *Latin American* informal traders—are entirely absent from this narrative. These groups face higher fees, slower transactions, and exclusion from both Visa’s and CIPS’s systems, yet their experiences are treated as collateral damage in geopolitical chess. Oral histories from *Filipino* OFW (Overseas Filipino Workers) communities reveal how remittance systems have historically been weaponised, from Spanish *cedulas* to modern-day wire transfer fees.
The Visa approval is not a diplomatic handshake but a skirmish in the *financial infrastructure war*, where payment systems function as vectors of economic sovereignty.
The framing obscures how this dynamic repeats historical patterns—from colonial banking monopolies to Bretton Woods—while ignoring Indigenous and marginalised voices whose economies are collateral in this competition. Solutions must move beyond state-corporate negotiations to include *Indigenous-led design*, *equity audits*, and *regional alliances*, revealing how financial systems are not neutral but deeply political. The trickster lens exposes the absurdity of treating money as apolitical, while future modelling warns of fragmentation risks. Without addressing these systemic gaps, ‘diplomatic outcomes’ will continue to serve elites while marginalising those who bear the costs.