Colonialism By Any Other Name
It may smell like a rose, but it isn't called a rose, it's called compassionate investment. It's the generosity of one country extended to another. It's the kindly actions of one country that encourages another to believe that its "investment" of know-how and people will ultimately benefit the receiving country. This is no rose; this is neo-colonialism. Taking place on a continent that has known more than enough of its share of exploitation in the past.But there you have it, China has made a deal with Africa. And as a result, the head of China's Export-Import Bank has appealed to the country's huge, restively under-employed rural workers to make their way to Africa. Where they will make their fortunes. China is a truly bustling, entrepreneurial landscape, where opportunities can be made to appear in the most unlikely places.
Take Tibet, for example, overrun now by enterprising, government-encouraged Chinese. No expense spared, even the world's most ambitiously-technical and costly railroad built to encourage and hasten the occupation. How, after all, to manage a population of 1.3-billion people, all of whom, not unreasonably, would appreciate the opportunity to make a decent living for themselves and their families?
So hundreds of thousands of Chinese workers have been hastened to Africa to help that hapless country exploit its vast natural resources. Almost a million rural poor have been despatched for the purpose of, as China delicately phrases it: "economic engagement with the continent". They are there to build railways, electricity grids, dams, and even to farm the land.
So unfortunate that Africa's population of unskilled labourers, like those of the invading Chinese, don't have the will, the fortitude and evidently, the opportunity to be engaged in this manner. China is busy investing in Africa's mineral resources, and at the same time constructively solving the problem of its surplus rural dwellers. With promises of tens of millions more to follow.
For the Chinese labourers who have never known such opportunities - jobs in Sudan, in Khartoum, and elsewhere in Africa - the future looks promising; these unskilled rural people anticipate making a fortune for themselves. "Africa has many countries with plenty of land, but food output that is not up to expectations", explained Li Ruogo, head of China's Export-Import Bank.
So African farmers, traditionally capable of growing crops to feed the surrounding populations, but for whom internecine conflicts, weather disasters and unstable politics have intervened to disrupt normalcy, are not offered the opportunity to advance their futures. Instead, rural Chinese, whom urban expansion in China threatens to displace in any event, are encouraged to undertake a great migration.
As Liu Jianjun, head of the Baoding-Africa business council claims: "We found local people lacked farming skills. Here in China, on the other hand, we are fast developing our industry, so many farmers no longer had land." So great tracts of African land is leased, and Chinese farmers moved out to till the soil.
How this benefits Africa only the future may tell.
Labels: Social-Cultural Deviations, That's Life
posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, February 12, 2008
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