So in other words, no down side.
Frowning takes 68 muscles.
Smiling takes 6.
Pulling this trigger takes 2.
I'm lazy.
Posted on 08/19/2010 12:08:11 PM PDT by PapaBear3625
Reminiscent of the West's imperial push in the 18th and 19th centuries - but on a much more dramatic, determined scale - China's rulers believe Africa can become a 'satellite' state, solving its own problems of over-population and shortage of natural resources at a stroke.
With little fanfare, a staggering 750,000 Chinese have settled in Africa over the past decade. More are on the way.
The strategy has been carefully devised by officials in Beijing, where one expert has estimated that China will eventually need to send 300 million people to Africa to solve the problems of over-population and pollution.
The plans appear on track. Across Africa, the red flag of China is flying. Lucrative deals are being struck to buy its commodities - oil, platinum, gold and minerals. New embassies and air routes are opening up. The continent's new Chinese elite can be seen everywhere, shopping at their own expensive boutiques, driving Mercedes and BMW limousines, sending their children to exclusive private schools.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Your posts make a lot of sense.
Thanks! It’s something I’ve been thinking about and writing about for at least the last couple of years: that Africa would yield vast profits to a country willing to be ruthless enough to the Africans.
We would be led to believe that amnesty and borrowing money from China are good when GWB does it, but bad when Obama does it.
“Africa would yield vast profits to a country willing to be ruthless enough to the Africans.”
Ruthless....more like merciful.
Not seeing how china can make africa worse. And yes, I have in fact been to 9 countries in africa, and not the tourist ones.
It’s pretty sad state of affairs in Africa.
But basically just about ANYTHING the Chinese does there makes the situation better off for the Africans.
Not necessarily. I'm thinking the Chinese will finally have little choice but to treat the Africans like the cowboys treated the Indians. And that would be bad for the Africans.
The European model was to import Europeans to run things, and hire Africans to do most of the grunt work. We can see how well that worked out for the Rhodesians and South Africans. As long as Africans are the majority of the population they will exert pressure, up to and including guerrilla warfare, to get political power.
The Chinese don't need the Africans. They have lots of peasants qualified for manual labor.
I don’t think so. China seems to have largely stumbled upon the same basic techniques of controlling minority populations that most modern countries(including the US) practices. In that they can keep ethnic minorities in a permanently low social position without looking like a bunch of Nazis all the time. How do you do that?
1. Keep them ignorant, Chinese schools for tibetans and Uighers are not nearly as good as the schools for Han Chinese in terms of funding or science/math courses.
2. Due to step 1, you get a significantly less educated minority population who then has to take the most menial jobs, putting them in the lowest economic strata.
3. Due to ignorance and poverty, young men of some initiative would turn to petty crime to advance their position. Then you apply police brutality to arrest all or most of the aggressive elements of a minority population and put them into prison labor factories, thus robbing that minority group of potential leadership material.
4. Use affirmative action policies to create an incompetent minority “elite”. Then the bulk of the minority population would actually look up to this small group as “leaders” and be totally screwed.
Policies like this ensures that the Tibetan and Uigher populations are only capable of riots and looting instead of an organized insurgency or a non-violent independence movement.
One problem: in Africa, it would be the Chinese who would be a minority (at least initially).
Also, your model breaks down when you take into account Asian minorities in the US.
Vietnamese refugees entered the US, literally with just the shirts on their backs, not speaking English, being unfamiliar with American culture, and IN JUST ONE GENERATION have a disproportionate number of valedictorians, doctors, scientists, etc. They attended the same public school system that non-Asian minorities attended, yet vastly outperformed them. They lived in poverty similar to non-Asian-minorities for the first few years, but were soon running their own small businesses.
This indicates that the low performance of non-Asian minorities is not primarily due to external factors of racism, but due to internal factors, whether cultural or genetic.
A century earlier, another wave of ethnic minorities arrived. They were subject to discrimination, yet persevered and within a generation or two had risen to high status. I'm speaking of the wave of Eastern European Jews.
Well, they're not "barbarians". But your numbers do make a point. 750,000 Chinese in a continent with 800 million people is hardly something to worry about. There are 10 million illegals here in the US. A nations of about 300+ million people.
Your comparing apples to oranges.
The Vietnamese or Jewish groups in the U.S were in the top economic and/or intellectual strata of their home countries. So even with subpar school systems and an oppressive environment they are able to succeed. Comparing the success of east Asians or Jews to the relative lack of it for African Americans is like comparing apples to oranges.
The jewish population that came to the US were only doctors and lawyers and top business executives? Really? You think that? It's very un-PC to think that, because it means you think those groups have superior genetics and culture, that allow them to succeed in "subpar school systems". This implies that people who don't succeed must have inferior genetics and/or culture, and that REALLY is an unacceptable viewpoint in some circles.
Look at any profile of early-1900's Jewish immigrants. Most were fleeing pogroms in Russia and eastern Europe. They were peddlers, tailors, etc. But they had a culture that embraced learning and hard work, so they succeeded. Same deal as the Vietnamese.
The Jews, the Chinese, the Vietnamese -- they were willing to work, to takes risks in starting small businesses, and to push their kids to get educated and become professionals.
Their biggest asset was not believing the hype about "the Man be keepin' us down".
“The jewish population that came to the US were only doctors and lawyers and top business executives?”
Not quite...but close enough. The Eastern European Jews from the 19th century were directly descended from bailiffs and merchants who fled to Eastern Europe from the Western European religious “pogroms” of the 16th and 17th centuries. To be successful merchants and/or tax accountants in a Europe where 1/4 of the population were starving at any given time meant that they either were sharper than the average European peasant of the day OR they had a culture with a stronger emphasis on education. In either case, they brought that culture to the U.S with them.
“Same deal as the Vietnamese. “
Well think about it. The South Vietnamese who came over here after the war were mostly either leaders within the old South Vietnam government/military establishment or they were specialists who gave significant aid to the U.S military.
Now people in leadership roles or specialists tend to be somewhat better educated and possibly more motivated than the average Vietnamese peasant of the day.
My point here is that, it’s not entirely fair to compare a small sub-group of people who were clearly not base-line either in culture or perhaps even in innate intelligence with their own population with an random group of indigenous peoples.
” Their biggest asset was not believing the hype about “the Man be keepin’ us down”.”
Well that’s just it. This attitude is a form of culture than can be taught to a people, ANY people, and especially a people that another group of people would want to control.
For example, American blacks have this kind of cultural attitude, but Caribbean blacks(without nearly as long a history of enslavement) have a very strong work ethic.
Tibetans have this type of culture now, but Chinese people don’t and these two groups are very VERY closely related, hailing from the same linguistic family.
The most glaring example if the Japanese Burakumin, who are the descendents of Korean slaves from the 1600s. Koreans who have been enslaved and oppressed for a couple of centuries have this attitude, yet Koreans who have not clearly have a very functional and positive culture.
Do you see what I’m getting at here?
“It’s very un-PC to think that, because it means you think those groups have superior genetics and culture, that allow them to succeed in “subpar school systems”.”
That is an absolute truth. A population with superior intelligence or culture will do better EVEN with sub-par schools, because they will make the most out of the limited opportunities given to them versus a population which does not.
So in other words, no down side.
Ahh well. The Chinese will have control of vital natural resoruces for some metals. If China smashes Islam in Africa then their is an upside.
The other thing about China is down the road - they could become the largest Christian country in the world. I think if they had free will, they would chose Christianity. It is a very optional choice that is not usually imposed on people like Islam.
Another downside is the destruction of the habitat for wild animals but Africa is big. Maybe the Chinese will stop the killing of elephants.
They're not going to be evenly spread out over the continent. Zimbabwe and South Africa have a good portion of the mineral wealth that they're interested in. When whites controlled Rhodesia (which became Zimbabwe) they were able to do it with a white population of just 270,000 controlling 6 million blacks at a ratio of 22 to 1. They only lost control due to external sanctions and external support for black rebels.
If the Chinese decided to take over control, they would only need enough Chinese men to hold the ports and airports long enough for a few million reinforcements to arrive. If a port was being held, the Chinese could quickly insert a lot of men and military supplies using their fleet of cargo ships.
THIS is how you have successful immigrants. Cherrypick from the right cultures.
Transporting a few million reinforcements isn't going to happen willy nilly. I doubt even China could do it overnight short of war time readiness. But your point is well taken, in that in a continent like Africa, where the local population has a difficult time uniting their resources, it would be difficult for them to push out the Chinese if the Chinese insisted on staying. And the 800 million Africans live in many separate countries. And even within those countries, the local people population would have a difficult time marshalling their resources.
Wheras in the US, if Americans wanted to forcibly remove 10 million illegals, it can happen quickly. Resources can be mobilized quickly in the US, provided there is political will. In Africa, the ability to marshal resources, let alone doing it quickly, is nearly non-existent.
But honestly, I really doubt China has coloniel ambitions in Africa.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.