This will all change when loan repayments are due and China insists on no-forgiveness and asks for more control of the actual infrastructure, and ultimately ownership. That kind of thing is frowned upon by Western governments because it is eerily similar to the colonialism playbook but China is unfettered by that past and can thus move ahead. Also, China is a totalitarian state so even if the State committed atrocities abroad there would be little to no domestic repercussions anyways.
>This will all change when loan repayments are due and China insists on no-forgiveness and asks for more control of the actual infrastructure...
Only they won't. When I was at Halliburton you could see the insidious brilliance of the Chinese strategy in Africa. Sure, there is support for rail everywhere. Support for roads everywhere. Factories everywhere. Resource extraction. Etc.
But ask yourself this, where does it all go? Follow the map of their rails and roads and you'll see that a lot of them just go to ports. I mean, you can't even complain about it, because, of course, where else would it go?
But I have a final question for you, will Africans own the freighters?
My boss at Halliburton was a brilliant strategic thinker. Was basically 100% sure that by 2100 there'd be so much freight traffic that you'd be able to walk from East African ports, to Shanghai, via the Indian Ocean, without getting your feet wet.
So the Chinese are effectively giving the Africans loans and whatnot in name only. Really it's a trap. Only the trap is not monetary, it's a physical logistics trap. They don't care if you pay for the roads or not, they only care that the roads go to the port. That's the evil of it, if the roads go to the port, you've probably already paid for them.
But, West and South Africa are the most developed stable parts. The parts facing China are the unstable and poorest, also lacking in natural resources in some places. Specifically Somalia and Sudan. It's conceivable that the West could forge ties with West and North Africa, especially North Africa, which already has strong ties to Europe. It seems unlikely that China would be able to freeze the West out of the entire continent with infrastructure alone.
It feels like treating Africa as a single unit is the issue here. More than likely, an "economic cold war" is the future of Africa, with North and Western African nations being Western aligned and Eastern African nations being Chinese aligned, with some variance and side flipping being inevitable. Similar to how the cold war was fought.
North Africa won't even be a factor. It's really kind of a non player.
Consider this, how you gonna move resources from Central Africa to North Africa without enormous investment in infrastructure? Crossing the Sahara at scale will not be cheap.
Same issue with sudan and somalia. They will be non players. Kenya is just better situated for extraction ports geographically speaking. What logistics expert is going to build roads or rail from central african resources to somalia, when they have to traverse kenya to get there? They'll just make kenya the extract point. Really it doesn't even have anything to do with security, or politics, or ideology, or what not all. It's just cheaper. Simple as that.
That's still money and infrastructure in Africa's pocket in the short term, and perhaps another freight company will visit Africa if the price is right.
Of course, this all makes sense until China makes a navy for the Indian Ocean.
Africa doesn't care, it's roads and railways they wouldn't have otherwise. As an added bonus, they get linked into the global supply chain. Which really gets their economies going. It's probably a fair trade?
I'm just pointing out that the Chinese are not doing what they are doing because they want to make 1.8% on some infrastructure loan to Africans. They have a plan. An insidious and evil plan, breathtaking in its scope, to link themselves to Africa in a way that is not easily de-linked.
It's not some monetary link that they are going after here.
They don't even try for a monetary link, likely because Africans are already trapped in a monetary link to us. So they flank us, and secure the logistics link. It's all very Chinese.
"To be certain you take what you attack,
attack only that which is undefended."
If you are in agreement with the parent poster that the Africans receive tangible benefits from Chinese infrastructure development, can you help me understand why you characterize the Chinese plans as "insidious and evil"?
It's evil in its intent to freeze the West out of Africa. Or rather, not to freeze us out, but to push us out of the the driver's seat so to speak. At the end of the Chinese strategic vision, is an Africa independent of the West. With either Africans in the driver's seat, or Chinese in the driver's seat. Or both. But no one else.
Now reasonable people can debate if we deserve to lose that seat. There certainly are good arguments that we do. But the irony, and the insidiousness here, is that the Chinese are being every bit as colonial as we were, they're just being a bit less greedy. Colonialism is not only evil when the West practices it, it's evil when China practices it as well.
Of course that sounds self serving coming from a Westerner at this point, and maybe it is a bit? But it's just how I see it.
I have to disagree with the first part of this following sentence:
> the Chinese are being every bit as colonial as we were, they're just being a bit less greedy. Colonialism is not only evil when the West practices it, it's evil when China practices it as well.
In my opinion, the problem with this view (and it's a very common view in the West) is that it downplays the ability of Africans to make a good deal for themselves. I think they are perfectly capable of understanding their own needs and forming strategic partnerships that are in their own best interests.
What China is offering is a simple business proposition: You need infrastructure, we need resources -let's make a deal if you find the terms palatable. They are free to take the deal or not. They are free to choose amongst any other creditor willing to loan to them. In fact, studies have found that China's leverage in trade negotiations is actually very limited due to the fact that most of these countries have access to alternative sources of financing and can (and do) demand the renegotiation of deals all the time with outcomes more favourable for themselves (for example when there is a change in government) [1].
I very much doubt that it is China's evil intent to freeze the West out of Africa, though that would probably be a nice bonus for them if it were to happen. China can't freeze the West out anymore than it can impose its own will upon Africa. It's Africa's choice. For the first time probably in history, Africa is in the driver's seat.
China's intentions are very simple and straightforward: to facilitate energy and resource security for themselves, and perhaps to build a manufacturing base for the future once it transitions into a consumption-driven economy. All of these intentions are rooted in mutually beneficial arrangements, not exploitative ones. Here's another tangible benefit besides infrastructure: in a survey by Mckinsey, they found that 89% of employees of Chinese firms in Africa were local, amounting to nearly 300,000 African jobs with 66% of them receiving skills training [2]. If this holds true of the 10,000 Chinese firms operating in Africa, that’s several million jobs created and workers provided with skills and apprenticeships.
I'm not trying to paint too rosy a picture here because obviously no relationship is ever perfect. There will always be some bad actors on both sides trying to get the upper hand. But from my point of view, this could not be more different from the colonialism practiced by western powers / corporations in Africa over the past few decades.
If you saw the growth of Chinese and African independence as a threat to your own perceived dominance you would. The poster seems to think of that as bad for the west.
...as "low hanging fruit" is shipped out the infrastructure will push further inward. This happened in Europe, then the Americas, and soon it appears it will happen in the "AU". Hopefully the local governments will grow with it and it will help Africans for Africans eventually.
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