By Chijioke Uwasomba
INTRODUCTION
“Most of what China has been doing in Africa today is what we did in Africa 150 years ago” – Jack Straw, British foreign secretary from 2001 to 2006.
“Our African partners really have to watch out that they will not be facing a new process of colonization”- A German development ministry appraisal remark about China. (Both citations from Sautman and Hairong, 2007:6)
Let us not quibble: interdependence is the fulcrum upon which the wheel of progress runs. This occurs at all levels of human relationships and also among nations. But we must warn at the outset of this discourse that unfair and unbalanced relationships including trade and investments relationships undermine and endanger nations that are at the receiving end of the relationship. As can be seen from the quotes above from the representatives of agents of two countries that have had unfair and unequal relationship with Africa for many years, the ubiquitous presence of China in Africa and African affairs is drawing fears and caution.
Africa has been at the receiving end since its contact with the West and as have been noted by Labi and Robinson (2001) in their blistering essay, “Looting Africa”, “Africa, its people already plundered by slavers, its animals by poachers and its mineral wealth by miners, is now yielding up its cultural heritage. The historical legacy of Africa is that of a continent of trade by force dating back centuries; slavery that uprooted and dispossessed about 12 million Africans; land grabs; vicious taxation schemes; precious metals spirited away, stealing of antiquities; imposition of racist ideologies to justify colonialism; carving up of Africa in Berlin in 1884-85, cold war battle grounds in which Africa was used as proxies for the US/USSR conflicts during the cold war and other wars signposted by mineral searches with the accompanying violence that left Africa wounded and devastated.
The continent is still getting progressively poorer, with per capita incomes in many countries “below those of the 1950s-60s era of independence” (Bond, 2006:2).
Colonialism imposed and encouraged cash crop production and mineral extraction activities in the colonies for export to the metropole and discouraged serious manufacturing.
It is therefore not surprising that many decades after independence African countries have not taken off with a view to making manufacturing for export a competitive affair. How can a people who have not provided for themselves compete favorably with the advanced economies? Rodney (1972) in his ground-breaking work had articulated this condition thus:
Under colonialism the ownership was complete and backed by military domination. Today, in many African countries the foreign ownership is still present, although the armies and flags of foreign powers have been removed. So long as foreigners own land, mines, factories, banks, insurance companies, means of transportation, newspapers, power stations, etc, then for so long will the wealth of Africa flow outwards into the hands of those elements. In other words, in the absence of direct political control, foreign investments ensure that the natural resources and labour of Africa produce economic value which is lost to the continent (208).
AFRICAN ELITES AND THEIR IDEA OF DEVELOPMENMT
Apparently, because of the nature, content and character of the African elite the tendency to accept hook, line and sinker the prescriptions of the outside institutions in regard to how they run their economies is a major problem and has posed a challenge to Africa’s development. When protective tariffs are lifted with ease and careless abandon growing infant industries and manufacturing jobs are prematurely dispensed with. It is in recognition of this state of affairs that led to the assertion of Christian Aid (2005) that “trade liberalization has cost sub-Saharan Africa $272 billion over the past 20 years… overall, local producers are selling less than they were before trade was liberalized” (3). The implication of the above is that more people become immiserized with a higher poverty index and attendant social conflicts and crises.
African elites are interested in the search for Foreign Direct Investments (FDI). This can be seen in the manner they embraced the 2001 new partnership for Africa’s development. Researchers like Thandika Nkandika Mkandawire (2005) had shown that “little FDI has gone into manufacturing industry. As for investment in mining, it is not drawn to African countries by macro-economic policy changes, as is often suggested, but by the prospect of better world prices, changes in attitude towards national ownership and sector specific incentives” (6)
Many African countries depend upon a single commodity for exports, including crude oil (Angola 92 per cent, Congo 57 per cent, Gabon 70 per cent, Nigeria 96 per cent and equatorial Guinea 91 per cent); Copper (Zambia 52 per cent); Diamonds (Botswana 91 per cent); Coffee (Burundi 75 per cent, Ethiopia 62 per cent; Uganda 83 per cent); tobacco (Malawi 59 per cent) and Uranium (Niger 59 per cent) – Source: Looting Africa, p. 58. Overall, Africa exports about 80 per cent of primary products. It is little wonder that the processes of exploitation of the African continent which started with slave trade as earlier noted have continued to this day even on a more rapacious manner by outside forces in cahoots with internal elements. This is another wave of colonialism in another guise and manner.
THE CHINESE ARE HERE
China’s contact with Africa began about 600 years ago when Zheng’s fleet arrived at the Indian Ocean west coast of today’s Kenya during the Tang dynasty (618-907). Official relations date back to the 1950s when many African countries became independent. But China’s economic engagement with Africa at a strategic level gained currency in the first years of the 21st century. China’s investments in Africa have increasingly diversified into manufacturing, retails, business services, mining, banking and construction. The influence of China can be felt in South Africa, Congo DR, Sudan, Algeria, Zambia, Nigeria, Egypt, Angola, Mozambique, Tanzania, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Equatorial Guinea, Senegal and Ethiopia.
As has been noted in a document by the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (2003), “Chinese policy in Africa has resulted from the developmental initiative of China rather than the African states themselves.” (52). The Bandung conference was the watershed which led to a Chinese cultural mission to Egypt, the Sudan, Morocco, Tunisia and Ethiopia.
There are over 800 state-owned Chinese industries and other small scale private sector concerns in sub-Saharan Africa. This plethora of Chinese multi-national corporations include but not limited to the following: Huawei technologies, ZTE, China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC); Minmetals Resources; Chinese National Offshore Corporation (CNOOC); Chinese National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC); The Chinese Petroleum and Chemical Corporation (SINOPEE); The Citic Group; The Aluminum of China (CHALCO); Haier Group; Sinochen; Bao Steel; BOE Technology Group, China World Best Group; Hisense, Holley Group, Jincheng Group; Lenovo Group, HFC; Shanghai Electric, Shougang Group, Shanghai Motors; TCL Corporation and the Wanxiang Group (Oshodi 2012:10). These are alongside other soft ideological infrastructures like the China Central Television Networks, Xinhua, a government-controlled newspaper with branches in 105 countries. There are over 120 Confucius institutions in over 40 countries.
It is clear that in spite of whatever anybody would say or argue, the Chinese are really in for a complete physical, mental and ideological contestation in Africa. According to Wolf (2016), quoting Shen (2015), in 2014, “13.6% of Chinese Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) stocks in Africa are in manufacturing activities”. Manufacturing sector investments even amount to as much as 31% of Chinese private FDI in 2013. Wolf further informs that 68% of Chinese outward Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) stocks in sub-Saharan Africa are in resource-rich countries. A survey conducted by Wolf indicates that over 250 Chinese overseas enterprises amounts to 27% invested in Africa.
In Ethiopia, there are more than 40 Chinese manufacturing firms; Angola is said to be the largest recipient of loans from China, receiving a total of $21.2 billion (27% of total Chinese lending to Africa; Wolf, 2016: 271; See Corkin, 2013). In the words of Oshodi (2012), China has emerged as the fastest growing economy for over two decades” and “that statistically speaking as a result of the buying of American treasury bonds, the US owes every Chinese citizen about a thousand dollars” (9).
Again, it is reported by Bond (2006) that “the Chinese National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) and two other large Chinese oil firms active in 17 African countries” (73). China is said to have invested over $2billion in Sudan. Schiller (2005) reports that there are genuine concerns over the environmental impact of various Chinese-run mining operations in Africa, “including copper mines in Zambia and Congo, and Titanium sands projects in ecological sensitive parts of Mozambique, Kenya, Tanzania, and Madagascar” (74).
THE CHINESE: WHAT ARE THEY OFFERING?
This question is very important taking into consideration the irrefutable fact that every nation no matter its level of philanthropism, first and foremost, operates to satisfy the interests of its citizens. The Chinese cannot be different and it must be stated that they are in Africa to pursue the realization of the interests of their citizens. It is in recognition of this reality that pushed Wolf (2006) to acknowledge that China is seen as a country that has come to penetrate or even reinforce unevenness inherent in capitalist development, notably by blocking the path to export-led industrialization and by locking African countries into “unfavourable trade structures which make it harder to diversify toward higher value-added products” (254).
Africa is witnessing another scramble for its resources. As noted earlier on, Bond (2006) has opined that from the early 2000s China has become a bigger factor in the process of exploiting Africa and its resources, “ attracting growing geo-political controversy ( because, from Sudan to Zimbabwe to Angola, Chinese loans and investments have propped up corrupt regimes) and having a marked deindustrialization effect” (59). The Chinese threat to African industry is real. Chiahemen (2005) reports how “Lesotho’s garment industry collapsed when the African Growth and Opportunity Act Benefits evaporated in 2005 once China joined the WTO” (29).
China has also been accused of illegally importing timber from forests in Indonesia, Cameroon, Congo, and Equatorial Guinea (www.globaltimber.org.uk). Schiller further asserts that “in its rush to expand, development experts say China is reinvigorating an older, crude style of development, re-establishing an era of white elephant and ‘prestige projects” with little benefits to local people. In Ethiopia, the Chinese state-owned Jiangxi International built $4 million worth of new housing after a flood left hundreds destitute. But instead of accommodating the homeless, the blocks ended up being used by military officials” (74).
Opinions are divided as to how China affects industrialization in Sub-Saharan Africa. While scholars like Kaplinsky(2008) argue the Chinese industrial and business policies and activities do not favour African manufacturing, others like Lin (2012); Jumbo and Frasher (2014); Oshodi (2012); Chakraparty2016 see Chinese investments in Africa as capable of igniting local industrialization and business development. Those who are critical about China’s investments in Africa accuse it of sundry anti-development activities. They argue among other things that Chinese investments in Africa are sustained by the use of Chinese rather than local workers. They further insist that thousands of Chinese labourers and engineers were imported to build Ethiopia’s $300 million Takazee Dam. In Sudan, Chinese workers are involved actively in the construction and maintenance of oil pipelines. They are being used in their thousands in other African countries. The Chinese are also accused of dumping sub-standard products into Africa and in the process killing off local initiatives and innovations. And as Oshodi (2012) quoting Adisu et al, a good number of Chinese investments in Africa will benefit the Chinese more than they benefit Africans:
There are few states that pursue a foreign policy that favours citizens of other countries than it would favour their own citizens. Where available, such nation-states would be in the minority. Apart from its support for decolonizing Africa, China had carried out tasks that sometimes favoured Africans more than it favours Chinese. In the heat of poverty, hunger and feminine in the years between 1956 and 1978, China still provided aids to Africa worth millions of dollars (24).
Mkandawire (2013) who is an otherwise trenchant critic of development in Africa occasioned by the borrowed development path chosen by most African leaders have this to say about what he considers the significant role of China in driving investment in Africa:
There can also be no doubt that China factor is making a huge difference not only because it has brought infrastructure back to the aid agenda but because it has led to the decoupling of African economies from slow-growing Europe and coupling to the more dynamic Asian economies (50).
There is no doubt that China has become a force to reckon with in Africa in particular and the world in general. At the political and ideological level, it has put in place the Forum for Chinese African Co-operation (FOCAC). It has built airports, roads, railways (example is the ongoing rail project in Nigeria) and many other huge infrastructural projects. These investments, one dare say present Africa with a new set of scrambling attempts and challenges. We note that the west is also not paying scant attention to the new influence of China in Africa. Both the West and the Chinese are on a binge to establish their presence and hold on Africa. The rivalry goes on beyond the west versus the Chinese ideological displays as it deepens the state of underdevelopment, dependency, immiserisation, of the poor African peoples. As much as Africa needs investments from the West and China, the strategic interests of Africa and its people must not be toyed with. This rivalry in no way benefits Africans but satisfies the strategic interests of the West and the Chinese and their lackeys in Africa.
Both the West and the Chinese view Africa as a vast reserve of natural resources and, increasingly a “camp” for cheap labour. It is the material interests of these “powers” that propel them into Africa, causing plunder, conflicts, and other forms of humiliating exploitation against Africans. As this paper was been written, the social media was agog with the stories of a harassment of a Nigerian who was bundled out of a Chinese restaurant for daring to patronise the place. Such conflicts bordering on racial superiority and class distinction have become serious issues in the Chinese/African relations even in the work place.
Another “war” is on as the Chinese are on the rampage in Africa and the Western world which has pillaged Africa many years is devising new tactics and strategies. The scrambling is on and in the next 50 to 100 years more tales of woes would be told by Africans.
REFERENCES
Chakrabarty, Malancha (2016). “Ethiopia-China Economic Relations: A Classic Win-Win Situation?” World Review of Political Economy Vol. 17, No. 2 (Sumer): 226-248.
Chiahemen. J. (2005). “African Fears “Tsunami” of Cheap Chinese Imports”. Reuters, Dec 18.
Rodney, Walter (1972). How Europe Underdeveloped Africa – Dar es Salaam: Tanzania Publishing house and London, Bogle L’Ouverture publications.
Christian Aid (2005). “The Economics of Failure: The Real Cost of “Free” trade for Poor Countries”. London. p.3.
Corking, L. (2011). “Chinese Construction Companies in Angola: A Local Linkages Perspective” MMCP discussion paper, No. 2; University of Cape Town and Open University.
Junbo, Jian and Frasheri Donata (2014). “Neo-colonialism or De-colonialism? China’s Economic
Engagement in Africa and the Implications for World Order” in African Journal of Political Science and International Relations Vol. 8 pp. 185-201 (October).
Kaplinsky, R. (2008). “What Does the Rise of China do for Industrialization in sub-Saharan Africa?” Review of Political economy 35 (115): 7-22.
Labi, A. and Robinson, S. (2001). “Looting Africa”, Time International Magazine, August 6 quoted in Patrick Bond (2006). Looting Africa: The Economics of Exploration. London: Zed Books.
Lin, J. Y. (2012). “From Flying Geese to Leading Dragons: New Opportunities and Strategies for Structural Transformation in Developing Countries”, Global Policy, 59(4): 397-409.
Mkandawire, t. (2005). “Maladjusted African Economies and Globalization” African Development, 30, 1-2, p.6.
Mkandawire, T. (2013). “Fifty Years of African Independence: Personal Reflections”. Dar es Salam: Mkukina Mgota Publishers
Oshodi, A. (2012). “Does China’s Presence in Africa mean Colonisation?” The Constitution Vol. 12, No. 3. (September): 1-54.
Sandman, B. and Hairong, Y. (2006). “East Mountain Tiger, West Mountain Tiger: China, the West, and Colonialism in Africa”. Maryland series in Contemporary Asian studies. Quoted in Mkandawire, T. (2013).
Schiller, B. (2005). “The China Model of Development, <http//www.opendemocracy.net/democracy-china/Shira_development-3136jsp>, 20 December. <www.opensociety.org>
Shen, X. (2015). “Private Chinese Investment in Africa: Myths and Realities” Development Policy Review 33 (i): 83-106.
Thakur, M. (2009). “Building on Progress? Chinese Engagement in Ethiopia” Occasional Paper, No. 38, China in Africa Project, South African Institute of International Affairs. http:saiia.org.za/occasional-papers/building-on-chinese-engagement-in-ethiopia. Nigeria and China Bilateral Ties in a New World Order (2003) Lagos: The Institute of International Affairs.
Wolf, C. (2016). “China and Latecomer Industrialization Processes in Sub-Saharan Africa: A case of
Combined and Development. World Review of Political Economy”, Vol. 7, No. 2. (Sumer): 249-284.
Dr Chijioke Uwasomba teaches at the Dept of English, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, osun State, Nigeria. He can be reached through Email: chijiokeuwasomba@gmail.com
Get more stuff like this
Subscribe to our mailing list and get interesting stuff and updates to your email inbox.