DAKAR – China’s sacred text
is not a holy book like the Torah, the Bible, or the Koran. Instead, it
is The Art of War by Sun-Tzu. Sun’s core belief is that the “ultimate
excellence lies not in winning every battle but in defeating the enemy
without ever fighting.”
CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphSo
it is no surprise that cunning and deception form an essential part of
Chinese diplomatic and corporate culture. Indeed, down through the ages
they have served as the touchstone for Chinese leaders’ survival and
success.
CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphNowadays,
we are witnessing the application of Sun’s ideas in Africa, where
China’s prime objectives are to secure energy and mineral supplies to
fuel its breakneck economic expansion, open up new markets, curtail
Taiwan’s influence on the continent, consolidate its burgeoning global
authority, and clinch for themselves African-allocated export quotas.
(The Chinese takeovers of South African and Nigerian textile industries
are good examples of this strategy. The textiles exported the world over
by these industries are deemed African exports when in reality they are
now Chinese exports.)
CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphAstutely,
China has sought to place its African investments and diplomacy within
the context of the old non-aligned movement and “Bandung spirit,” an era
when many Africans viewed China as a brotherly oppressed nation, and
thus supported efforts by the People’s Republic to gain a permanent seat
on the United Nations Security Council, to replace Taiwan. And, of
course, China offered firm backing for Africa’s anti-colonial struggles
and efforts to end apartheid.
CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphIn
trying to depict its current dealings with Africa as “win-win”
cooperation, China deliberately seeks to portray Africa’s current
relations with the West as exploitative. Unlike China, its leaders
claim, the West continues to hold African countries hostage through a
combination of unequal trade deals, lack of access to capital markets,
aid dependency, financial deregulation and economic liberalization,
budget austerity, crippling debt, political meddling, and military
intervention.
CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphWhat
the Chinese are silent about is that their country’s growing engagement
in Africa has created both opportunities and risks for African
development. Although China’s trade, foreign direct investment (FDI),
and aid may broaden Africa’s growth options, they also promote what can
only be called a win-lose situation. For, excluding oil, Africa has a
negative trade balance with China.
CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphMaking
matters worse, African exports to China are even less
technology-intensive than its exports to the world. China’s share of
Africa’s unprocessed primary products was more than 80% of its total
imports from Africa. Equally, imports consist of cheap Chinese products
of appallingly poor quality.
CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphThe
level of Chinese FDI flowing into Africa at present is staggering. But
this Chinese FDI is bundled together with concessional loans, and there
is much double-counting, with the same ventures being recorded both as
aid flows and as inflows of FDI. Given the heavy volume of concessionary
loans provided by China, concern about African countries’ future debt
burden is growing. And no matter how much China publicizes its record in
Africa, the greatest contributor of financial inflows to the continent
is the African diaspora. Indeed, South Africa, not China, is the country
making the largest investments in the rest of Africa.
CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphChina’s
credo of “non-interference in domestic affairs” and “separation of
business and politics” is, not surprisingly, music to the ears of
African leaders, who fall over each other to sing the praises of Chinese
cooperation with their countries. These leaders’ attitudes recall the
worst behavior of their predecessors, many of whom engaged centuries ago
with the West’s rising imperial powers to halt the growth of indigenous
industry. Instead, these potentates of the past chose to import
manufactured goods from Europe in exchange for their own subjects, whom
they exported as slaves.
CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphWhen
slavery was abolished, the terms of partnership with Western colonizers
changed from trade in slaves to trade in commodities. After
independence in the early 1960’s, during the Cold War, they played the
West against the Soviet bloc for the same purpose.
CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphToday,
many African leaders pursue similar policies with China, which has
struck bargains across Africa to secure crude oil, minerals, and metals
in exchange for infrastructure built by Chinese companies. Hence, the
import of Chinese labor into a continent not lacking in able-bodied
workers. Indeed, within a mere decade, more Chinese have come to live in
Africa than there are Europeans on the continent, even after many
centuries of European colonial and neo-colonial rule. With
apartheid-style practices – including the gunning down of local workers
by a Chinese manager in Zambia – Chinese managers impose appalling
working conditions on their African employees.
CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphToday,
China has seized control of a huge swath of local African industries,
in the process grabbing their allocated export quotas. As China’s global
economic role increases, its labor costs will rise and its currency
will appreciate, eroding its competitiveness. Might Chinese
manufacturers then look to Africa as a base for production, using the
facilities they have built and the hordes of workers they have been
steadily exporting there?
CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphChinese
leaders pride themselves on a keen sense of history, and on taking a
long-term view of China’s development. Still, in perpetuating a
partnership with the same breed of corrupt leaders that colluded with
Africa’s previous invaders and exploiters, the Chinese have forgotten
that Africans, albeit often their own worst enemies, have nonetheless
gained the upper hand over their foes in the end.
CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphThe
descendants of slave traders and slave owners in the United States now
have a black man as their president; Africa’s colonizers have all been
defeated and kicked out; and apartheid’s proponents are now governed by
those they despised and abused for generations. Unless the Chinese mend
their ways, the same fate awaits them in Africa. Sun-Tzu would
understand that.
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/china-s-african-front
