For centuries the West ran amok across Africa - slavery, colonialism, neo-colonialism, transfer pricing and the continued extraction of the continent's natural endowments at a steep discount. What does Africa have to show for this engagement?
As Castro put it, "They talk about the failure of socialism, but where is the success of capitalism in Africa, Asia, and Latin America?"
As someone who lives in Africa, he's almost spot on. All the African countries are turning to Chinese loans and debt forgiveness as they offer much better terms than the IMF or World Bank. And in exchange you also get massive infrastructure projects, something the west will never do. As an added bonus you don't have to put up with the bullshit of "fighting communism" that caused quite a few African countries to have US backed dictatorships. This is a significant upgrade over western "diplomacy". However this does not mean China 100% good. Due to capitalism, local industries have to compete with Chinese imports. There is no way an African tech company can compete with Huawei for example, and the local textile industry can't compete with Chinese imports either.
It seems hard to find African sources on this, but I found a paper from Nigerian scholars on the topic(If someone has more on hand, please share it). I thought it adresses some of your legitimate concerns, it is still long, but I tried to cut it down to the relevant parts:
First of all, one needs to recognize that the Chinese government imposes no political conditions on African governments before signing contracts either for exploration or other economic activities.34 Secondly, Chinese firms are willing to invest where western companies are unwilling. Western investors and aid agencies are unwilling to invest in areas such as: physical infrastructure, industry and agriculture.These are areas that are crucial to Africa development. It is well known that Africa desperately needs infrastructure of all type. Finding about $20 billion per annum35 required in infrastructure investment is laborious. China investment is a welcome development for Africa. p. 9
Since the late 1970s, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has not funded heavy infrastructure projectsin Africa. The World Bank and USAID in the 1990s reduced support for agriculture as high as 90 percent36.
Many of the deals closed by Chinese firms in Africa are ones that western companies would not stake their investment. For example, in 2005 China and Nigeria signed a $800 million crude oil sale agreement. This in turn would lead to China’s buying of 30,000 barrels a day for five years. It also won a license to operate four oil blocks and take-over of the Nigerian refinery. These are risky and money losing ventures that no western oil company would ever think of staking its investment38 because these investments are located in a politically volatile and hot spotszones. In addition, Chinese investment provides additional source of investment capital at a time when aid alone is unable to address unemployment, poverty alleviation and generate a significant multiplier effect through the local economy by the way of sourcing and provision of local management expertise and technology transfer. To make this happens, China has taken up some measures. Cheap consumer goods still account for high proportion of Chinese export to Africa. It has indicated its readiness to support Africa’s product value chain. Also, to be more relevant in the 21st Century, Africa must develop its human capital and have access to new technology. China has provided both. It has offered training to many African professionals under its commitment to train Africa’s emergent workforce. Machinery, electronic equipment and high tech products have been exported to Africa. Above all, China has built more factories to process African raw materials in Africa rather than just extracting low value-added African commodities for processing in China.39 For example, a Chinese baggage manufacturing company commenced trading with Africa in 2000. In 2003, it established a factory in Nigeria which serves the domestic market in Nigeria, brings revenue to the government and serves other countries such as Ghana.40 With respect to skill transfer and human capital development, between 2000 and 2006, China has trained 16,000 African professionals. Another 20,000 was scheduled to be trained between 2010 and 2012. Last year, the former Chinese president Hu Jintao announced an expansive aid programme that wouldoffer 18,000 government scholarships and train 30,000 Africans in various sectors by 2015.
Conclusion:
It is indisputable that Africa has benefited from China’s re-emergence. The entire argument of many critics of China in-road into Africa has been centred on the trade imbalances between China and many African countries. In fact, it is argued that the main goal of China in Africa is to exploit its resources to develop its growing industry and foreign aid to Africa is a bribe to the leaders to make them acquiesce to this nature of relationship. . As already shown, China’s aid and investment in Africa has helped to build a super-structure upon which African countries’ economic growth can be built, even in areas where western countries and agencies are not willing to invest. Again the argument that China is interested natural resources such as crude oil and minerals does not hold water in the face of available data. The impacts of Chinese re-emergence in Africa are more visible in infrastructure development, investment, trade and human capital development. It has also led to African commodity producers to command higher prices considering China’s massive importation. Again it has also imposes a considerable challenges on African countries that havenot diversified their economies. Loans from China haveprovided African countries with an alternative source for capital, which weakened the position of the World Bank inproject financing in Africa. China’s Overseas Development Assistance has extricated African nations from being glued to conditions such as tight fiscal control, transparency and commitment to the rule of law and democracy which attached to aid from western countries. If managed effectively, Chinese ODA and investment can help in really addressing deficient infrastructureand spur growth. However, Africa must strive more to leverage Chinese engagement for maximum benefit. The stream of aid and investment gives African countries a unique opportunity to translate these external supports into overall gains. To take fulladvantage of this relationship, African government must play their political cardswell, not only as leaders of individual countries but also through the collective mechanism of the African Union. African governments including the African Union (AU)and civil society must work together to establish a constructive policy framework that will ensure that the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) helps to make a positive net contribution to their economies and societies. If this engagement is managed poorly, Africa risks Chinese exploitation and ultimately misses a unique opportunity to advance its political, economic and social development.Well, what do you want China to do? Facilitate revolutions, so that China will be sanctioned to death?
Or should China just stay out of Africa completely and leave them to be exploited by the West?
Yeah, but if they had started their involvement in Africa with the explicit goal of facilitating revolution, China would already be under heavy sanctions, maybe like Iran or the DPRK.
Well, that's a long post. Very interesting. Hard to verify how true it is, but I want to believe Chinas investments in Africa are helping it develop on meaningful ways.
I mean I'm not saying that China is only in Africa for altruistic reasons, but I do believe that the relationships are forged with a goal of mutual development in mind, rather than what you usually hear of, like just for resource extraction for Chinese companies.
No actually. Proletarian internationalism would be like communists in China helping the working class of Burkina Faso take power. This is capital from China being invested in Africa with the return on investment flowing back to Chinese capitalists.
with the return on investment flowing back to Chinese capitalists.
while also leaving infrastructure and greater development in African countries. this isn't a zero-sum thing, I really don't see your point.
Yea, capitalism is almost always a win/win game for everyone involved.
I’m sure Chinese capitalists are magically not deriving any sort of surplus from the exploitation of labor in Africa.
One alternative would be a sort of in-kind reparations: a country like the U.S. could provide the capital and expertise to build, say, a railway in a developing country, and then leave ownership of that railway in the hands of that country's government. I don't think it's fair to criticize China for not doing this (especially when no one else is doing this, and when China has a responsibility to develop their domestic economy for their own citizens, too), but it's the kind of idealistic goal we should be shooting for.
Bear with me, only my thoughts.
My hope is, that Chinas intention is to slowly and meticulously, basically under the nose of the US, even utilising its resources if possible in Chinas interest, wants to establish a framework for mutual development globally. Promoting their socialist system through their actions rather than trying to explicitly facilitate singular revolutions, which would've definitely gotten them sanctioned on Iran levels I'd imagine.When it comes to direct support for political parties, I can imagine why China tries to stay from that, at least for now, see the mentioned sanctions.
You know how the US and its allies would misconstrue this as regime change(haha I know) and if necessary ostracise China from the rest of the planet.And even if China would provide aid to revolutionary causes in Africa how likely would it be that they succeed in the long term without support in the region?
To clarify, I do not uncritically support China. But I have hope for them being able to break the US' global hegemony.
And if you think about it how else could capitalism ever be overthrown?
I didn't say they weren't, I just said that at least they are leaving infrastructure and development, whereas Europe and the US would just exploit those workers even worse and plunder their natural resources.
What do you want China to do? Export revolutions and anger pretty much every other state? Have some patience, that time will come but first the PRC must get stronger and so should communism internationally.
What do you want China to do? Export revolutions and anger pretty much every other state?
It seems like every nation, (well just those nations in the US sphere of influence) is already angry at China as capitalist competition breeds conflict.
And yes, they should be building for international working class power, but that would of course require the CPC to stop betraying the revolution at home.
I'd recommend the China in Africa podcast. They have a balanced ranged of perspectives and are linked with a university.
They have recent episodes on China's competitive edge in Africa and on China training Nigerian railway engineers.
Without comment as to the content of the thread, the author is a Georgetown grad who works for an NGO (in Washington DC) and specializes in "private finance for development." So it's interesting that you describe his thread as "an African perspective" without any sort of qualification.
And now a guy who works for the Center for Global Development in DC and specializes in capital investment in Africa.
Does that mean he's not African anymore?
The thread doesn't read like he drank too much of the Washington Kool-Aid, so I don't know what's the issue.It might make his perspective a little different from the 99.9% of people in Africa who don't work for NGO's funded by the ExxonMobil and Mastercard Foundations.
Did you even bother to read the excerpt I posted? He does not argue in favor of the west.
Huh. So what's it mean that this person who is in the business of facilitating the imperialist plunder of Africa is now strongly in favor of Chinese capital investment in Africa?
You struggle to read don't you? They don't seem strongly in favor of it so much as criticizing the west and noting a perspective, perhaps to try and spur them to better deceptive practices to outflank China.
Nah, I’m actually pretty solid with reading comprehension, and the guy is obviously writing to build a case for the merits of Chinese capital investment in Africa.
This makes sense, because he’s literally employed to facilitate foreign capital investment, including Chinese capital, in Africa.
You actually understand all this, you’re just mad that I pointed out that this woke “African perspective” that you posted is the perspective of a guy from Liberia with an elite American education who works with foreign capitalists to invest in/exploit African nations.
