Posted on 02/03/2007 6:32:30 PM PST by blam
Africa discovers dark side of Chinese master
By Colin Freeman in Chambishi, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 1:05am GMT 04/02/2007
The smooth red carpet rolled out across Africa last week for Hu Jintao, the Chinese president, did not quite reach the gates of Zambia's Chambishi copper mine.
A young street child outside a Chinese-run business centre
His plans to make an official visit yesterday to the plant, which re-opened under Chinese state ownership eight years ago, fell victim to a hitch he rarely encounters at home: the not-so-grateful worker.
Tipped off that miners were threatening protests about poor pay and conditions, Mr Hu changed his schedule, leaving the podium - specially built for the occasion - ungraced with his presence.
The miners, who lost 51 colleagues in an explosion at a subsidiary plant two years ago, were a rare dissenting voice on Mr Hu's 12-day, eight-nation tour of Africa, which took in Cameroon, Liberia and Sudan last week and continues to Namibia, South Africa, Mozambique and the Seychelles.
Otherwise, it was choreographed all too smoothly: five-star hotels sealed off to accommodate his vast retinue, surreal "press briefings" at which no questions were permitted, and state functions to which awkward guests like Zambia's opposition parties, who back the miners' grievances, were not invited.
The VIP treatment was not surprising, however, given his country's rapidly-expanding new role in Africa as an investor, trader and aid donor. As well as an army of trade delegates signing business deals by the hundred, Mr Hu came with £2.7 billion to spend in aid and unconditional loans, cash pledged when he entertained 43 African leaders in Beijing last November. Like the Europeans who scrambled for Africa in the 19th and early 20th centuries, his motives are far from altruistic: Beijing wants vast quantities of Zambia's copper, along with Angola's oil, Gabon's timber and Zimbabwe's platinum for its own massive economic expansion, which it hopes will turn it into a new superpower.
Yet to a growing number of African governments - especially the more corrupt and undemocratic ones - Mr Hu represents a much more promising saviour than George W Bush, Tony Blair or U2's Bono. Thanks to his country's long-standing "mutual non-interference policy", Chinese aid and investment deals come on a "no-strings" basis, free of high-minded lectures or conditions about how the cash should be spent.
However, the enthusiasm of Africa's ruling elites for a non-Western benefactor is not shared by the miners of Chambishi township, whose Chinese masters arrived after the mine had lain shut for more than a decade. The sprawling plant is now decked in Maoist-style slogans urging workers to make "vigorous efforts to make the company prosperous", yet the way it is run is capitalism at its most raw.
As well as the mine's questionable safety record, workers' benefits have been slashed, unions discouraged and employees are paid as little as £53 a month, despite rising copper prices.
One miner - who would not give his name for fear of losing his job - told The Sunday Telegraph: "We are glad that the Chinese re-opened the mine, as unemployment here was very high and there were problems with theft and drunkenness.
"But they are difficult to work for. Safety is still poor even after the explosion that killed my friends, and when we ask for more money, they threaten to sack us. I would prefer to work for white managers - they are better educated and they understand what a Zambian needs to live on."
A particular grievance among the miners is that they no longer have the generous cradle-to-the-grave benefits they enjoyed when the copper mines were in state hands.
Today, Chambishi's roads are muddy and potholed, its menfolk spend much of their spare time getting drunk in local shebeens, and mine-sponsored soccer teams that once made the Copper Belt region a talent pool for the country's national team are defunct.
"They have created employment but they should improve the social conditions," said Isaac Lumba, 32, one of a group of miners drinking cartons of strong maize beer outside the Chember Grocery store, a small shack among Chambishi township's rundown, single-storey cottages. "If they are taking our copper they should give something back to the community."
The poor conditions in the Chinese mine were highlighted in a Christian Aid report released last week. It said that while other foreign mine operators, including Swiss and Indian firms, were often slipshod too, they provided at least some social benefits, sponsoring anti-malaria programmes and football teams. The report also described how two miners were shot and injured during a wages protest outside the Chinese managers' compound last year, either by Chinese-hired security guards or by Zambian police. The shooting, it said, "confirmed in the popular imagination the idea that Chinese bosses were uniquely brutal and exploitative, and that the Zambian state's relationship to them was too close".
Fears about the Chinese way of doing business are not just confined to the Copper Belt. In Zambia's capital, Lusaka, traders and manufacturers say the flood of cheap Chinese goods into their markets has made it all but impossible to earn a living. It is a complaint repeated in marketplaces in nearly every African country that has done a trade-for-aid deal.
Zambia, however, is unusual in Africa in that the Chinese presence has become a major political issue. Last October, Michael Sata's opposition Patriotic Front party nearly unseated Levy Mwanawasa, the Zambian president, after campaigning on a populist anti-Chinese ticket, benefiting partly from resentment over conditions in the mines.
Guy Scott, the Patriotic Front general secretary, believes Beijing already wields unhealthy influence over African governments, effectively turning whichever party is in power into a client faction. "They are out to colonise Africa economically," he said.
But it is easy to blame the Chinese for problems that have more to do with the former British colony's longer-term economic woes. Unemployment, for example, is 50 per cent, and 85 per cent of Zambians live below the poverty line, a point not lost on Mr Mwanawasa, who insists Chinese investment offers a leg-up to prosperity after four decades of post-independence mediocrity.
In speeches last week designed to head off protests against Mr Hu's visit, he spoke scathingly of anti-Chinese riots that erupted after last year's elections. "The Chinese government has brought a lot of development to this country and these are the people you are demonstrating against?" he asked.
Despite the controversy, Chinese businessmen are flocking to Lusaka in such numbers that five months ago, the city opened its first Chinese-owned casino.
A Chinese-built five-star hotel is also going up in Livingstone, named after the British missionary who spearheaded the first great colonial venture here. It may be some time, however, before President Hu or any of his successors is accorded a similar honour.
As well as the mine's questionable safety record, workers' benefits have been slashed, unions discouraged and employees are paid as little as £53 a month, despite rising copper prices.
This is not capitalism. It's slavery. Unions are a right of assembly. Capitalists and workers can make their bargain through unions if it is the most expeditious way to accommodate one another. Communists don't permit bargaining. Unions in communist societies are as useless as mammaries on a bull.
Oil is to Arabs as Labor is to Red China
The Chinese aren’t communist, they’re fascist.
Colonialism was the best thing that ever happened to Africa.
After the Imperial Powers were thrown out, the communists came to power and the working folks of Africa started to really get screwed. Well, hey, that's collectivism for you: screw the masses, they don't matter.
Are you saying the Chinese are more like Franco and Pinochet than Trotsky and Lenin? Trotsky and Lenin believed in the equality of the masses. Life sucked for all Russians under them. The Chinese seem to me to follow the Stalin model where a well cared for cadre drag the masses through Hell. It looks more communism to me. The masses have little material wealth, they have no choice, and the trains don't run on time.
Well, duh!
LUSAKA (Reuters) - At least 46 people were killed today when a blast tore through an explosives factory at Zambia's Chambishi copper mine, destroying the plant and ripping workers apart, Zambia's mining minister said.
"I cannot explain this tragedy which has killed 46 people so far. The entire plant has been razed. Most people were burned badly while others were just in pieces," he told Reuters by telephone from the mine, 400km north of Lusaka.
Officials said the explosion occurred at an explosives factory on the premises of the Chambishi mine, owned by China's NFC Mining Africa Plc. The mine itself was not effected by the explosion.
The Chinese-owned Bgrimm Explosives Plant is a major supplier of explosives for Chambishi mine and other copper mines in Zambia..." [Snip]
Yesterday we learned that this Zambian president claims he can cure AIDS with herbs. Maybe they need to turn him in and get a better one.
It depends on who you consider to be the masses. Hundreds of millions of common Chinese living along the coast are benefitting greatly with several times greater material wealth than just 10 years ago, while those in inner provinces are still very poor. It is the coastal regions that are also driving the economy.
It's wrong to say that only the Communist party members in China are benefitting. If that were the case, the Communists would have long been overthrown.
I agree with the other poster, the strong side of China is much more fascist than Communist. China will become ever more dangerous as its fascist side slowly grows, because fascism is far more efficient than Communism.
Also, trains in China's coastal regions do run on time.
The current Chinese leadership is more like Hitler than Pinochet or Franco. Remember that Hitler was the head of the National Socialist German Workers Party. His leadership got rich off of various deals with industry. The Chinese Communist Party has morphed into a National Socialist Party for this century. Rabidly nationalist, fraudulently pretending to speak for the workers and people, and letting capitalism flourish as long as they and their families get a big cut of the action, it is a repeat of Germany in the 1930's and a far cry from Mao or Pol Pot's different form of totalarianism. Where Mao murdered for ideology, the current party kills to keep the cash flowing.
Right on. The Chinese leadership is using nationalism to hold onto power. And they are suceeding. Chinese nationalism has never been higher. In 1989, Chinese students protest the government, that would never happen today.
That was before Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms. Today, the advent of a mix of raw and crony capitalism in China means ordinary Chinese are doing pretty well. Five million cars were sold in China last year, about three times the number sold in India. Cadres in China have to produce economic growth - which isn't all that hard in a country with low wages and huge amounts of cheap land. But India's subpar growth is an indication that rapid economic growth isn't like falling off a log.
Don't give our free traders any ideas to use here!
* My note: remember Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein offering the former Zambian leader Kenneth Kaunda, a place on the "Council of 12 Wise Men" back before saddam hid in the spiderhole?
My two cents…what’s left of Chinese communist totalitarianism is used only to maintain control. The Chinese leadership’s policy of military expansion, confrontation and economic colonialism are for the benefit of a ruling class. They’re nationalist who use rigid socialism to control society. No pretense is left of international revolution and class struggle.
Fascist and communist are both very capable of dragging the masses through hell and I think you’d agree we’re only discussing semantics. The current government in China isn’t good for China, Asia, the US, or the rest of the world. It is a good deal for China’s robber barons and politicians.
This is not capitalism. It's slavery. Unions are a right of assembly. Capitalists and workers can make their bargain through unions if it is the most expeditious way to accommodate one another. Communists don't permit bargaining. Unions in communist societies are as useless as mammaries on a bull.
I'm sorry, but I get the distinct impression that you think everyone is somehow entitled to work in an Osha certified air conditioned workplace. This is Zambia we are talking about, not America. They complain that the miners are paid as little as 53 pounds per month. That is 100 U.S. dollars per month, $1200 a year. You know how much the average Zambian makes per year? $395 dollars. Thats right, these "underpaid" miners according to the Brits are earning 3 times what they would working for domestic Zambian companies. If the miners don't like their job, they can quit anytime.
Precisely. If Zambia were to open its entire market to foreign investment, it would catch up to and overtake China* in no time. But it has taken probably millions of dollars in bribes by the Chinese government in order to be allowed to practice raw capitalism in Zambia.
* China is doing well because it has opened the door a crack. All of Africa would do well to do the same. But they won't do it. Some of it is cronyistic protectionism of favored tycoons. Probably the rest is one-upmanship - it's not enough to be rich - the rest of the country must be poor, to improve the relative standing of the plutocrats.
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