Obviously, this book is written from a bourgeois perspective or at least one that’s slightly anti-communist (whether the author realizes it or not).

That being said, it’s certainly interesting. I was reading White Supremacy Confronted by Gerald Horne and it mentions many times China (as in, the New China period where Mao held a lot of sway) giving out loans and trading with African countries and other Asian countries. The DPRK, I think, did the same thing. Robert Mugabe’s administration and Zimbabwe were big beneficiaries of this policy. So was Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, who thanked Mao in a speech and personally mentioned the loans themselves (this was public; it’s cited by the author Gerald Horne).

I might actually get this book, though it obviously misconstrues “markets” as being inherently “capitalistic” (which would make the economy of 60s/70s China “capitalistic” given that it still had enterprise and market mechanics in play, correct me if I’m wrong).

Obviously, markets are very much an invention and change only slightly between slave societies, feudal societies, and so on. They are not specific to capitalist societies. Richard Laibman of the socialist journal Science & Society even says that “markets as inherently capitalistic” is a talking point by the bourgeois press from the Cold War and before then.