China’s Trade in Africa Carries a Price Tag

NYT ^ | 08/21/07 | LYDIA POLGREEN and HOWARD W. FRENCH

[TigerLikesRooster]

New Power in Africa

China’s Trade in Africa Carries a Price Tag

By LYDIA POLGREEN and HOWARD W. FRENCH

KABWE, Zambia — The courtyard in front of the Zambia China Mulungushi Textiles factory is so quiet, even at midday, that the fluttering of the ragged Chinese and Zambian flags is the only sound hanging in the air.

The factory used to roar. From the day it opened more than 20 years ago, the vast compound had shuddered to the whir of rollers and the clatter of mechanical weaving machines spooling out millions of yards of brightly colored African cloth.

Today, only the cotton gin still runs, with the company’s Chinese managers buying raw cotton for export to China’s humming textile industry. Nobody can say when or even if the factory here will reopen.

“We are back where we started,” said Wilfred Collins Wonani, who leads the Chamber of Commerce here, sighing at the loss of one of the city’s biggest employers. “Sending raw materials out, bringing cheap manufactured goods in. This isn’t progress. It is colonialism.”

Chinese officials and their African allies like to call their growing relationship a win-win proposition, a rising tide that lifts all boats in China’s ever-widening sea of influence.

This year, China pledged $20 billion to finance trade and infrastructure across the continent over the next three years. In Zambia alone, China plans to invest $800 million in the next few years.

From South Africa’s manganese mines to Niger’s uranium pits, from Sudan’s oil fields to Congo’s cobalt mines, China’s hunger for resources has been a shot in the arm, increasing revenues and helping push some of the world’s poorest countries further up the ladder of development.

[gbs]

Sounds like sex without the marriage part to me!

[TigerLikesRooster]

Such anti-Chinese sentiment has been brewing here for several years. When China’s president, Hu Jintao, visited Zambia earlier this year he received the usual red carpet treatment from his Zambian host, President Levy Mwanawasa , but the reception from many ordinary Zambians was nasty. A trip to the site of China’s big new investment, Chambishi, had to be scuttled entirely because of fears of unrest, and the circumstances of the industrial disaster there are still not entirely understood.

[Zhang Fei]

Beyond that, there are major infrastructure problems in Africa, where industry struggles with inadequate roads and railways, and unreliable electricity and water supplies.

I would say this is key. Foreign investors will build some infrastructure. But they won't build it all. African governments need to stop stealing all of the funds supposedly earmarked for infrastructure. I suspect China is doing well in Africa because Africans are giving the Chinese special privileges to flout stupid domestic laws governing foreign investments. Africa generically blames being ruled by Western governments - instead of their traditional, backward societies - for all of its problems. The reason they're giving China special exemptions is because they can't exactly blame their problems on Chinese rule, since they've never been ruled by the Chinese.

[TigerLikesRooster]

The reason they're giving China special exemptions is because they can't exactly blame their problems on Chinese rule, since they've never been ruled by the Chinese.

Judging from the article above, African ruling elite care more about this angle than ordinary people, who don't see all that much difference between Westerners and Chinese. They also see the prospect of becoming Chinese style party fat cats, how former socialists can grab gazillion dollars of cash using cheap local labors.

Chicom MO will be emulated by the local elites in Africa.

[ken21]

gosh,

is this

chinese imperialism?

where are the american university professors protesting this imperialism?

[JerseyHighlander]

Zambia “threw off” the shackles of the white man oppressor, then “threw off” the shackles of the Indian man oppressor, and now are left dealing with the worst of all colonialist powers, the Chinese.

[tbw2]

I agree. Infrastructure that the Chinese build will be built for the factories they want to build. Like the call centers in India that include generators - that do not cover the surrounding residential areas.