https://www.workers.org/2017/11/23/john-parker-chinas-role-in-african-development/
John Parker: China’s role in African development
By John Parker posted on November 23, 2017
John Parker
This talk was presented on Nov. 18 to the Workers World Party National
Conference.
China is using so-called market socialism models in its Silk Road
initiatives in Asia, Africa and Latin America, sending some state-owned
enterprises, but also private Chinese capitalists, abroad to set up
companies engaged in building infrastructure.
The capitalists are motivated by profit, not social justice. However,
unlike Western imperialist investors who are given free rein by their
countries of origin to do whatever makes a profit, the Chinese
capitalists are under the control of the Chinese government — a
government whose financial, major utilities, oil, commercial and
transportation industries are state owned. Any capitalist enterprise
must be compliant with the state, not the other way around.
China’s so-called market socialism is really a partial ideological
retreat. It comes from imperialism’s constant military threats and
economic war against both China and the former USSR.
But our movement must recognize the difference between China’s
engagements with Asia, Africa and Latin America versus the Western
imperialist engagements there. Not to do so would only fuel
anti-communism and benefit especially U.S. imperialism, by hiding the
fact that China and the U.S. have irreconcilable differences in relation
to which social classes they represent.
China’s significant investments in Africa since 2000 are a very real
threat to imperialism as a whole and especially U.S. imperialism. It’s
not only the hundreds of billions of dollars being invested, but the
type of investment. China’s investments allow for the development of
infrastructure and a real improvement in the economies of these countries.
Any improvement in the economy that affects the living standards of the
people, that helps remove the stifling, debilitating, oppressive cloud
of extreme poverty, is key to building self-determination and liberation.
We know that the development of the working class and productive forces
is an important aspect of building socialism. But we also know that
building socialism without a Soviet Union to counter violent U.S.
imperialist embargoes and economic sabotage is even more challenging,
especially for developing countries which are therefore dependent on
capitalist investment.
China can’t yet make up for the former USSR’s counterbalance to
imperialism’s attacks on Africa and Latin America. But it seems willing
to protect its investments and partnerships with military force, for
example by supplying military means or funds to the African Union’s
military unit, or by placing Chinese troops in South Sudan to protect
the oil pipelines, which had been sabotaged by U.S.-supported rebel forces.
Last July, China set up its first military base overseas in the East
African country of Djibouti, to establish an outpost capable of keeping
an eye on the main U.S. Africom base there. China now has improved
aircraft that can reach speeds of Mach 10, defying radar. Its
qualitative leaps in the technology of encryption can potentially defy
any National Security Agency surveillance.
All this must keep the monopoly bankers and industrialists who run this
country up all night in a cold sweat. The U.S. especially will do
everything it can to discredit and vilify China.
In reporting on China’s role in Africa, the bourgeois media scour the
continent to find the most egregious examples of Chinese company
injustice, hoping to paint all Chinese relations in Africa with the same
brush. They especially like to talk about the Chinese privately owned
Collum coal mine in Zambia, although the top four copper mining
companies in Zambia are from Canada, Switzerland and India.
In 2000, five Chinese brothers asked the Zambian government to reopen a
low-quality coal mine that had been shut down as not profitable. With
capitalist production, when your product is inferior to that of your
competitors, it’s impossible to maintain profits to the satisfaction of
investors/creditors without cutting wages, safety standards and benefits
while increasing speedup and ignoring ecological concerns.
The company was cited for severe air pollution and contaminating the
water supply of nearby communities. The Mine Workers Union of Zambia
complained that workers were being beaten by bosses while government
officials and police were paid off to look the other way.
So in October 2010, hundreds of miners protested. Two Chinese
supervisors began shooting. No one was killed — a pellet gun was
reportedly used — but two people were critically injured and 11 miners
were wounded.
By 2012, the workers were fed up and held another protest. This time a
Chinese manager was unintentionally killed. However, no charges were
brought against the workers and the Zambian government seized the mine.
In 2015, the government returned the mine to the Chinese owners with the
warning that it would be taken again if safety and environmental
violations arose.
Chinese companies in Africa get all the publicity, but little is said
about Canadian-owned First Quantum Minerals, one of Zambia’s top four
mining companies.
From 1980 on, Zambia was unable to fight strong-arm tactics by Canada,
the IMF and the World Bank regarding First Quantum Minerals. Economic
aid essential for Zambia’s survival was threatened. So in 1990, the
country was forced to privatize its nationalized copper mines and
companies like First Quantum could buy them cheaply. The country was
also forced to let a former vice president of the Bank of Canada become
governor of the Bank of Zambia.
This guaranteed long-term poverty for Zambian workers as the Canadian
government reinforced every crooked deal made by its majority holding
companies, like First Quantum.
Yan Hairong, associate professor at Hong Kong Polytechnic University,
explained the difference between the Canadian government’s attitude and
that of China. Instead of demanding no action be taken against the
anti-worker crimes of the company, the Chinese government welcomed the
nationalization of the Collum company by Zambia. And it ordered Collum
to pay injured workers thousands of dollars each. It then forced the
owners to make a public apology to the entire workforce at the mine.
The Canadian government and First Quantum Minerals, on the other hand,
set up a systemic guarantee of poverty in Zambia — yet no major
headlines vilified Canada or its company.
Colonial or imperialist relationships are about politically and
economically controlling a country to steal its resources and deny its
ability to develop independently. That also requires a military force.
Some privately owned Chinese companies may exhibit chauvinism and even
different forms of exploitation towards their workers in Africa. This
does not automatically equate to colonialism, especially when it does
not continue and create the underdevelopment that African scholar Walter
Rodney exposed in 1968 with his groundbreaking and authoritative book:
“How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.”
Rodney wrote: “In the first place, the wealth created by African labor
and from African resources was grabbed by the capitalist countries of
Europe; and in the second place, restrictions were placed upon African
capacity to make the maximum use of its economic potential — which is
what development is all about.”
U.S. military moves in Africa since 2008 are definitely part of its
neocolonial plans and also threaten naked colonialism.
In a 2015 Black Agenda Report, Nick Turse of TomDispatch wrote: “In
remote locales, behind fences and beyond the gaze of prying eyes, the
U.S. military has built an extensive archipelago of African outposts,
transforming the continent, experts say, into a laboratory for a new
kind of war.”
China’s engagement is of a different nature. Zimbabwe Herald reporter
Lovemore Chikova wrote about 2015 and 2016 loan packages negotiated
between China and Zimbabwe.
They included $5 billion for free aid and interest-free loans. China
would train 200,000 technical personnel and provide 40,000 training
opportunities for African personnel in China.
In addition, the aid prioritized modernizing agriculture with
technological expertise, machinery, training and teams of experts.
As Walter Rodney pointed out, increasing technology in agriculture is
one of the most essential prerequisites for development in Africa.
I spent a few weeks in Sudan and Egypt. In Sudan, I saw an area for
refugees that was many acres wide and long, as far as I could see.
Families were living in mud huts in over 110 degree temperatures with no
electricity, hospitals or stores in sight.
When our son was a toddler and got a fever, we could easily go to the
corner store and get ibuprofen, a thermometer or Pedialyte. And we
didn’t have to worry about U.S. drones flying overhead. Not so for many
in Africa.
When we’re talking about development, it’s not about getting the latest
consumer goods or trendy stuff or incorporating a Western lifestyle —
we’re talking about attaining the basics for survival. Basics whose
denial, as Walter Rodney illuminated, was not a lifestyle choice of
African people, but a derailment of their natural progress by European
colonialism.
By clarifying the character of China’s intervention in Africa,
contradictions and all, we can be in solidarity with those voices in
Africa representing the genuine people’s movements on the continent who
are determined to arise, “no more in thrall.”
(WW photo: Joseph Piette)
(WW photo: Joseph Piette)
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