In a 4x4 vehicle arranged by a local group that monitors Mozambique's forests, I travel to Maganja da Costa in the once-heavily-wooded Zambezia province, the country's poorest. Maganja is a tiny district, a five-hour drive along tortuous, dusty roads -- traveled by villagers on bicycles with huge bags of firewood on their heads -- from Quelimane, one of the country's main port cities. Quelimane was journey's end for Livingstone on his trek from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean in 1856. But it is the start of my trans-African journey. My destination is a field office of Madeiras Alman, a unit of a Taiwanese conglomerate and one of the largest exporters of timber from Mozambique back to mainland China.
The office turns out to be nothing more than an unmarked trailer in the middle of a forest. A hand-painted sign nailed to a nearby stick reads Alman. The trailer is vacant, but within minutes of arriving, I am surrounded by dozens of angry locals demanding to be paid. "They think you're the Chinese owner," explains Gil, a forest technician acting as my guide. After explaining through my translator that I'm not the owner, or even Chinese, I manage to calm the men down. They say they'd been stiffed for work performed -- a common complaint in the forestry trade here. They'd each been promised $120 for three months of backbreaking labor -- lifting logs the size of girders by hand onto trucks, in a forest littered with land mines left over from a civil war -- but were paid only $25. They've been showing up every day for months in a futile search for managers who never appear.
They are short men, under 5 feet tall, and wear ripped clothes that are likely Chinese knockoffs. A man named Pedro sports a Sean John shirt, another an orange David Beckham tee, while a third reads Vogue Paris. One man's cap informs me that This is the closest thing to a handyman this family's got. Many are barefoot, with bloodshot eyes and missing teeth, flies moving in and out of their mouths.
One man identifies himself as Pinto, the chief, and says they are from the Alukadi tribe, which has been in the region for centuries. They never signed any paperwork with their Asian bosses, he tells me, but they yell and scream, promising to "go to war" unless they are paid. "We have the power to remove this office," one man shouts. In fact, they have no power at all.
"Let China sleep," Napoleon famously remarked, "for when she awakes, she will shake the world." Today, China is not only roused, she is devouring the world for breakfast. In just a few years, it has become the world's top consumer of timber -- as well as zinc (with 30% of global demand), iron and steel (27%), lead (25%), aluminum (23%), and copper (22%), along with nickel, tin, coal, cotton, and rubber. The entire sub-Sahara currently uses one-twentieth the amount of steel China does. And although China is the planet's second-biggest consumer of oil, behind the United States, it's gaining fast.
One-fifth of humankind lives in China, and an increasing number of those people are seeking a consumerist version of xiaokang, or "well-being." If their per capita GDP (now about $6,500) approaches South Korean levels in the next 20 years, as it is on track to do, Chinese consumption of aluminum and iron ore will increase fivefold; oil, eightfold; and copper, ninefold. As Sunter, the author and futurologist, puts it, "China is putting 1.3 billion people through an industrial revolution with neither colonies nor substantial indigenous resources besides coal. The only way it can do this is by establishing long-term supply contracts with resource-rich countries."
In sub-Saharan Africa, the Chinese seem to be everywhere: clearing trees in Mozambique, drilling for oil in Sudan, digging in copper mines in Zambia, opening textile factories in Kenya, prospecting for uranium in Zimbabwe, buying cobalt in the Congo, laying expressways in Angola. They have launched a satellite from Nigeria and built phone networks in rural Ghana and a dozen other countries. Hospitals, water pipelines, dams, railways, airports, hotels, soccer stadiums, parliament buildings -- nearly all of them linked, in some way, to China's gaining access to raw materials. A $5 billion, 50-year government fund to encourage Chinese companies to invest in Africa. A $9 billion loan package for Congo. A $5.6 billion stake (20%) in Standard Bank, the biggest on the continent. And in April, $40 billion -- plus in export-credit guarantees to help fund investment in Nigeria, Africa's biggest oil producer.
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Recent Comments | 26 Total
May 25, 2008 at 4:59am by Frank Lowe
China buy from everyone, not only from Africa. Australian have been busy digging up what have you all over their continent to sell to china. Similarly American and Canadian gurard their export of agricultural and farm products zealously. They even secretly financed research to smear their competitors from the third world to get ahead.
The real problem in Africa is the meddling of westerners who don't allow the African to learn their lesson one step at a time. while the west took two hundred years to move from savagery and slavery to segregation/apartheid to equal right, they expect the african to change overnight.
The solution in Africa is stop meddling the politic there, stop export of weapons, no smeaky support of agents provocateur. Let them decide where they want to go, anyhow its their continent.
June 3, 2008 at 4:04pm by James Belle
I fear for africa, just as it struggles to recover from the exploitations of colonialism here comes the Chinese to deliver some more exploitation.
June 3, 2008 at 4:54pm by Christopher Scherer
Africa is in a very difficult spot. The need for money, jobs and some sense of security far out ways the fear of losing their natural resources. Hopefully, articles like this can shine a spotlight on the region and call more attention to what is happening there before it is too late. Maybe the will of the UN, the African Union or the Southern African Development Community, all of which Mozambique is a part of, could stem the tide of what appears to be a lopsided trading agreement.
June 4, 2008 at 2:37am by Long Pan
I was a Fast Company subscriber for a year and stopped doing that because of the poor quality of the articles. This one is no exception. There is no solid facts. Simply just a collection of highly biased second hand materials, which have no relation to his personal experience in Africa whatsoever. I don't even bother to comment on his amateur writing.
Fast Company editors, if your goal is to provide trash, congratulations, you are getting there!
June 9, 2008 at 10:28pm by sanch indigo
China Supplies America's demands. America's appetite for inexpensive poor quality products transformed China as the New Colonial Power in Africa. The Chinese are doing exactly what the europeans did, rape africa of her natural resources to develop there our country. Its a cycle the chinese didn't start it , they are just beating the Europeans at their our game. Lets all be socially responsible consumers and investors ,that will solve the problem. Americans cant afford to boycott chinese products, Gas price is out of control, Cheap Chinese goods is all we have left. We cant afford to buy products made in america , thanks to Nixon and Bush. The Flag on White House is made in China , not America. So the cycle will continue until africa saves herself or its natural resources go dry and when that happens there's Mars waiting to be exploited
June 19, 2008 at 4:42pm by Darrick Smith
Long Pan, you shouldn't be commenting on anyone's "amateur writing", given the multiple errors in your post.
September 4, 2008 at 12:58pm by Patrick Keller
Africans are so stupid. Can't they see that history is repeating itself. The same thing that happen during the The Renaissance and the Commercial Revolution of Europe in the 15th-18th centuries is happening again. It is just a repeat of the transatlantic slave trade. Human flesh then was a great resource that outsiders such as Europe and the Middle East were taking advantage of to grow their wealth and power. Now China is taking the rest of what is left of Africa. Africa continues to settle for sin(corruption, greed and violence) as it did before by selling their own people to the Europeans. They need to acquire wisdom, understanding and knowledge unless they perish.
June 5, 2009 at 1:46pm by M Claxton
I have noticed a lot of shrill China bashing in the western press these days. It seems to make western European based people's uptight to see non European descended people getting together , working out deals and approaching their level of development. I remain highly skeptical and suspicious at the emotional manipulation that is implied in these articles. To equate China in Africa and the Chinese with the Euro Americans is really ridiculous. When did China commit a Holocaust like the middle passage? No European descended person can point a finger, and after all of the years of Africa's suffering from this group what does it have to show for it? China is bring some of its money to set Africa up and plug it into the world development chain. That is a good thing.