How China's taking over Africa, and why the West should be VERY worried

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.

Another downside is the destruction of the habitat for wild animals but Africa is big. Maybe the Chinese will stop the killing of elephants.

African subsistence farmers encroach on elephant habitats. The Chinese will have no use for the farmers, particularly if the farmers are seen as providing support and logistics for guerrillas.

Elephants are also killed by poachers for their ivory. I've wondered if the best way to put poachers out of business would be to:

1) Create a legitimate market for ivory, and non-destructively harvest the ivory by tranquilizing the elephant, cutting off the tusks, and then letting the elephant re-grow his tusks, and

2) Deal with poachers by having the elephant habitats be free-fire zones, where unauthorized people can be hunted and killed. It would make for good, realistic training for special-ops and counter-guerrilla troops. You could also sell hunting licenses to people who would be interested in hunting poachers. They could video the hunt and put it on Animal Channel.

You might be right. The Chinese would be a lot more ruthless that our norm, anyways - Probably somewhere along the line of the Belgian Congo. So they’d be able to control more area with fewer people.

No, they would be ruthless in a different way. As I keep saying, China needs Africa's resources, particularly mineral resources. China does not need the Africans.

China would view the Africans' continued existence in mineral-rich territory as a threat to China's long-term control of the territory. By whatever means necessary, the Chinese would desire the removal of the Africans from areas of strategic value (mining territories, ports, the land that links the two) and their replacement with Chinese settlers.

RE :” The result of China's demand for raw materials and its sales of products to Africa is that turnover in trade between Africa and China has risen from £5million annually a decade ago to £6billion today. However, there is a lethal price to pay. There is a sinister aspect to this invasion. Chinese-made war planes roar through the African sky, bombing opponents. Chinese-made assault rifles and grenades are being used to fuel countless murderous civil wars, often over the materials the Chinese are desperate to buy. Take, for example, Zimbabwe. Recently, a giant container ship from China was due to deliver its cargo of three million rounds of AK-47 ammunition, 3,000 rocket-propelled grenades and 1,500 mortars to President Robert Mugabe's regime....The Chinese are contemptuous of such criticism. To them, Africa is about pragmatism, not human rights. ‘Business is business,’ says Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Zhou Wenzhong, adding that Beijing should not interfere in ‘internal’ affairs. ‘We try to separate politics from business.... There have also been riots in Zambia, Angola and Congo over the flood of Chinese immigrant workers. The Chinese do not use African labour where possible, saying black Africans are lazy and unskilled. “

I have an associate who has family in Africa and he told me similar stories. China is doing what liberals STILL accused the US of doing, world colonialism. But they are looking towards what is good for China's future first unlike.....

There was a time when the US was so rich that it could afford to bail out many other countries (Marshall Plan) and fight their battles (Korean War.) But the past 30-40 years we have been been on a march to bankruptcy as liberals still call us the ‘richest nation on earth’ as a justification for more and more handouts. Remember when Bush Sr told us Gulf War 1 was about 'jobs' and we got paid for that war? Those days seem like a million years away now.

A very wise a prescient poster once said :” While China invests in businesses, energy, metals, cheap labor (???) we invest in food stamps, unemployment compensation, stimulus tax ‘credit’ checks, illegal immigrants, public sector unions, you can see where this is headed. . at A wise poster comment#32

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