Thanks in no small part to China, the overall economy for the sub-Sahara has grown by an average of 6% a year since 2004, with nations that export oil and minerals leading the pack. At the beginning of the decade, when China was just getting started, The Economist published a cover story titled "The Hopeless Continent." It infuriated many Africans, but it was hard to argue with at the time. Today, many of China's projects in Africa deliver real economic benefit: Improving a road, or building one, helps not just the trucker hauling copper feedstock to the coast, but also the owner of the new hotel along the route and the women selling oranges in the parking lot. Some observers believe that China is Africa's only hope for an economic jump start.
But much of the wealth China injects into Africa clearly flows into the pockets of what George Ayittey, a Ghanaian economist and professor at American University in Washington, calls a "vampire parasitic elite." Last June, the head of China's Export-Import Bank took the position that transparency will come only after China's economic might has worked its magic. "Transparency and good governance are good terminologies," Li Ruogu told an audience in Cape Town, "but achieving them is not a precondition of development; it is rather the result of it."
The problem with that theory is that sub-Saharan countries are being systematically stripped of their sources of potential wealth and seeing them shipped overseas. A major aspect of China's own development was the emergence of its competitive light-manufacturing sector; Africa may never get that chance, given the flood of cheap household goods and cheap labor coming back from China. Textiles are the traditional first step toward industrialization, but the Chinese export engine has already eviscerated clothing and footwear industries in countries such as Botswana, South Africa, Kenya, and Swaziland. China has similarly destroyed the fledgling plastics industry in Nigeria. Will sub-Saharan nations be able to ascend the industrial ladder over the next generation? Or is it their fate to serve as little more than the world's mine shaft?
Every American president beginning with Nixon has asserted that engagement and trade with China will lead to democracy there. As candidate Bush declared in 2000, "The case for trade is not just monetary, but moral... . Trade freely with China, and time is on our side."
But what if the whole paradigm is a fantasy? "Why do Americans believe that with advancing prosperity China will automatically come to have a political system like ours?" wonders James Mann, the former Beijing bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times. "Is it simply because the Chinese now eat at McDonald's and wear blue jeans?" Now an author in residence at Johns Hopkins University, Mann questioned those assumptions last year in a book called The China Fantasy: How Our Leaders Explain Away Chinese Repression. He makes a powerful case that China's emerging middle class and urban elite have every reason to fear democracy, support the Communist Party, and preserve the status quo: the 900 million hungry peasants and migrant workers sitting beneath them.
"America's current China policy amounts to an unstated bargain," writes Mann. "We have abandoned any serious attempt to challenge China's one-party state, and we have gotten in exchange the right to unfettered commerce with China." As Mann sees it, "the Chinese and American elites share a common interest in the existing economic order, in which China serves as the world's low-wage, high-volume, all-purpose manufacturing center. Thus, on the surface, it looks as if middle-class Americans are identifying with middle-class Chinese, dreaming that the Chinese, too, will one day insist on their choice of political candidates the way they are now able to select from a range of lattes and mochas at Starbucks." But the business communities of China and the United States do not share these dreams, he explains. Both profit from the Chinese system staying as it is. "Trade is trade," says Mann. "It is not a magic political potion for democracy... . Few in the West are willing to allow the continuing arrests and jailing of dissidents to jeopardize ongoing business with China."
So "who's integrating whom?" asks Mann. "Is the U.S. now integrating China into a new international economic order based upon free-market principles? Or on the other hand is China now integrating the United States into a new international political order where democracy is no longer favored and where a government's continuing eradication of all organized political opposition is accepted or ignored?"
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Recent Comments | 17 Total
May 17, 2008 at 2:42pm by arnie lerma
Dear Mr BEhar, You have out done yourself. This is an amazingly informative article, thank you. I learned from your words. Regards Arnie Lerma
May 21, 2008 at 3:37pm by Shelley Mosley
Mr. Behar:
An incredibly informative article highlighting that while we focus on how the price of gas impacts Americans' ability to take summer vacations, others are taking the longer view and are out-strategizing us in acquiring the resources we will all require in the next 50 years. We are asleep at the switch.
June 3, 2008 at 4:53pm by James Belle
China is a much bigger player on the world stage than many think, the west better have contingency plans, otherwise competing with them will be much harder in the next 50 years.
June 6, 2008 at 12:38am by CHET WHITESIDE
THANK YOU, AFTER 27 YEARS TRAVELING THROUGHOUT AFRICA YOU HAVE PUT INTO WORDS TO WHAT I HAVE SEEN AND EXPERIENCE AND HAD NOT THE POWER TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT. TODAY WHAT IS THE VALUE OF LIFE?
June 6, 2008 at 5:51pm by GEOVANI LUNA
Dear: Mr. Behar
astonishing article.
What can I say. keep up the good work.
Regards. Geovani Luna.
June 6, 2008 at 8:13pm by Afam Edozie
It is the nature of man to exploit his fellow man, whether man on man, village on village, clan on clan or nation on nation. To deny this is a triple failure, failing to understand our history, failing to understand the purpose of law, and failing to understand what goes on in every school yard in the world.
Europeans, Americans, Chinese and Indians all come to Africa with a view to what they can take out, not what they can put in. They have always done so and I don’t see a world in my lifetime where I will expect anything different.
That China is now emerging as did the US, Germany and Japan at the beginning of the last century. And Germany and Japan did again after the war, is obvious. But the fact that China has the scarcity mentality (as did Germany, Britain and Japan at the beginning of the last century – which led them to fight for resources) (and for sure in the short term all things are scarce,) does not mean that energy and food will always be too scarce to support the needs of +10 billion people.
Time and time again, man’s creativity and ingenuity has been up to the task of finding alternatives, that support the continued accession (in some fronts) of our species. And there are alternatives, it is just that they take some years to develop and bring on stream. Natural resource cycles typically last between 15 and 20 years, so six years really is just the beginning – if you stay focused on demand and supply you will be one of the few that will see the market turn, at exactly the same time that everyone else is saying that prices will continue to rise for ever and indeed even the people who are today skeptical about more gains will be in the process of getting into the market just as it truly peaks and goes after another 20 year trough (the greater fools.)
The United States and the West are no more special to Africa than any other country or group of countries that can provide markets for their goods, capital for their industry and expertise for their development. During the cold war the US understood this and took over leadership for Africa from Britain and France, after the cold war they abandoned their puppets in Somalia and elsewhere leaving behind a vacuum resulting in an explosion in conflict across much of the continent, which is only just subsiding as new power equilibriums have been reached.
Before the emergence of Asia, the United States and the West were the only game in town. But the US did not use this power in any positive way. As a result few Africans will cry at the emergence of a new exploiter.
The great mistakes of US foreign policy (if I can call them mistakes) are that the US does not to have a strategy nor to have any 'real' values that they adhere to.
So Africans neither look up to them as a moral beacon (despite the fancy talk,) nor have they built in strategic advantages that will give them an edge in the future.
As a result the US lost the Shah's Iran (where it backed autocracy over democracy; whilst extolling the virtues of democracy), is loosing a host of other countries. And will likely loose much of Africa to China.
The Chinese also have no values worthy of emulation (Ok, they are disciplined and work hard etc. but you know what I mean,) but they do have an effective strategy.
Their strategy is to
i) use loss leaders (and leverage their low cost base) to get a foot hold into a country - offering to support good projects for cheap (foreigners bearing gifts policy),
ii) Ignore national politics, you do just what you want we’re only here for business (which may seem shocking, except when you compare it to the US rhetoric (from the perspective of us natives) which is ‘be just like me’ (I see no evil policy),
iii) corrupt the locals (despite Nigeria's reputation as a den of corruption I know many people who don't take bribes, regardless the Chinese still try to bribe them and when they don't accept they try even harder, like they were programmed to do this in head office, and
iv) invade the country
I live in Nigeria and the Chinese are moving in here at an alarming rate, there are more Chinese living here than any other minority group and they are coming in at every level. Large, Medium and Small sized Chinese companies. As well as sole Chinese traders. They have factories in almost every corner of the country.
They go to the middle of no where, ask the locals for land to build a $10 million processing plant (or something) (why should anyone say no, no one else - not even our own govn - has come to do anything to provide us with jobs) and in any locality outside of the major cities even $1 million investment is a big deal. They then import hundreds of Chinese workers for every job except the most menial and go ahead to treat all their workers (Chinese and Nigerians) like slaves.
They do not transfer skills, they do not train, they do no even die (I kid you not, Chinese do not die in Nigeria), when one dies his death is kept secret, his body is shipped back to China in bulk using refrigerated containers and another Chinese comes to take his job.
The only part of their colonialisation strategy that is failing is that they are not allowed to marry local girls. But I think they have a shortage of girls of their own, so we see an increase in the number of 'secret' wives. How this one will pan out is anyone's guess. But I guess they will get shipped home and we will be left with lots of half Chinese babies.
Few policy makers in Africa understand the Chinese strategy and even fewer of them have the capability of doing anything about it. In 20 years, the Chinese will be a big minority in Africa, with significant participation in industry and economic life. I think it is in the Prince by Machiavelli that it is explained that one of the best ways to bind a country to you is to relocate a sizeable number of your loyal subjects there (as the English did in Northern Ireland.) Tensions and civil turbulence come with the territory, but exploiter seldom care.
The west has not had a coherent strategy since neo-colonialism failed in the 70s (another exploitative system that replaced colonialism which was also exploitative, which replaced slavery.) The US attempt to establish an African command is laughable and is seen in Africa as a desperate attempt to introduce a military strategy.
No doubt a charm offensive with promises of dollops of aid will eventually get them the base, and no doubt they will be able to establish a naval presence through their planned deep water port in Sao Tome. But as you can see it does not stand up to the Chinese strategy which involves feet on the ground and involvement in the community.
On Richard’s last point, the ‘development’ boat has not left, there are always opportunities for people who have land, can acquire skills and live in a stable environment, to begin the process of creating capital and becoming more productive.
Unfortunately, mainly due to geography, all the races did not develop productivity at the same speed (Negro Africans were still taking the continent from Khoi Africans in the mid fifteenth century,) and our nature is to exploit rather than help those that are weaker than us. Within nations this predatory behavior is controlled by law, but between nations, peoples and races it remains the order of the day. So any African expecting that the Chinese (Americans or any one else from the outside) are here to help would better spend their time making their own chains.
Richard and other observers may be surprised to see Africa tackle many of its political problems over the next 30 years (just as China was able to tackle its ideological problems between the 1940s and 1970s, which has led to their emergence now,) After which it is a short trip to get on the boat or if the boat has truly sailed then to make our own.
I apologize if I have rambled on too long for a comment on an article, but the Richard’s brilliantly researched article brought out many issues that I could not help but comment on. And if you really want to help Africa keep your aid dollars in your pocket and instead invest them in African business, not only will you be increasing productivity of Africans (leveraging their labour with capital) you will make a better return than you would from the S&P500. You can read about African companies that are building boats at www.smartinvestorafrica.com.
June 9, 2008 at 2:52pm by david wayne osedach
This is an eye opening article.
Does it leave any doubt that there will be devastating global wars in the near future over commodities such as oil, water, or copper, and iron?
Can or, will the US instigate them?
June 16, 2008 at 9:52am by Sowande Tichawonna
I applaud Richard Behar and Fast Company for shedding light on this global issue. If there was ever a justification to boycott the upcoming Olympics this qualifies in spades.