Why has China built a ghost town in Africa?

Kilamba,  the vacant satellite city for 500,000 on the outskirts of Angola’s capital  Luanda, is just one of many China is building across the country – and across  the entire continent.

Over  the last decade, China has pumped billions of pounds into Africa, and is showing  no signs of slowing down. ANDREW MALONE writes why this means the West should be VERY worried.

Risky: Locals dig through mountains of mining waste looking for scraps of metal ore in The CongoRisky: Locals dig through mountains of mining waste looking for scraps of metal ore in The Congo         Risky: Locals dig through mountains of mining waste  looking for scraps of metal ore in The Congo

China’s push into Africa is said to be  reminiscent of the West’s imperial move  in the 18th and 19th centuries – but on  a much more dramatic, determined scale.

China’s rulers believe Africa can  become a  ‘satellite’ state, solving its own problems of over-population  and shortage of  natural resources at a stroke.

With little fanfare, a staggering  750,000  Chinese have settled in Africa over the past decade. And more  are believed to  be on their way.

The strategy has been carefully devised by  officials in Beijing, where one expert has estimated that China will eventually  need to send 300million people to Africa to solve the problems of  over-population and pollution.

The plans appear on track. Across  Africa,  the red flag of China is flying. Lucrative deals are being  struck to buy its  commodities – oil, platinum, gold and minerals.

New embassies and air routes are  opening up.  The continent’s new Chinese elite can be seen everywhere,  shopping at their own  expensive boutiques, driving Mercedes and BMW  limousines, sending their  children to exclusive private schools.

The pot-holed roads are cluttered  with  Chinese buses, taking people to markets filled with cheap Chinese  goods. More  than a thousand miles of new Chinese railroads are  crisscrossing the continent,  carrying billions of tons of  illegally-logged timber, diamonds and  gold.

The trains are linked to ports dotted around  the coast, waiting to carry the goods back to Beijing after  unloading cargoes  of cheap toys made in China.

Confucius Institutes (state-funded  Chinese  ‘cultural centres’) have sprung up throughout Africa, as far  afield as the tiny  land-locked countries of Burundi and Rwanda, teaching baffled local people how  to do business in Mandarin and Cantonese.

Massive dams are being built,  flooding  nature reserves. The land is scarred with giant Chinese mines,  with ‘slave’  labourers paid less than £1 a day to extract ore and  minerals.

Pristine forests are being destroyed, with China taking up to 70 per cent of all timber from Africa. All over this great continent, the Chinese presence is swelling into a flood. Angola has its own ‘Chinatown’, as do great African cities such as Dar es Salaam and Nairobi.

Exclusive, gated compounds, serving  only  Chinese food, and where no blacks are allowed, are being built all  over the  continent. ‘African cloths’ sold in markets on the continent  are now almost  always imported, bearing the legend: ‘Made in China’.

Never far away: The influence of the Chinese is always close at hand in AfricaNever far away: The influence of the Chinese is always close at hand in Africa              Never far away: The influence of the Chinese is always  close at hand in Africa

From Nigeria in the north, to  Equatorial  Guinea, Gabon and Angola in the west, across Chad and Sudan  in the east, and  south through Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique, China  has seized a vice-like  grip on a continent which officials have decided  is crucial to the superpower’s  long-term survival.

‘The Chinese are all over the place,’ says  Trevor Ncube, a prominent African businessman with publishing  interests around  the continent. ‘If the British were our masters  yesterday, the Chinese have  taken their place.’

Likened to one race deciding to adopt a new  home on another planet, Beijing has launched its so-called ‘One  China In  Africa’ policy because of crippling pressure on its own natural resources in a  country where the population has almost trebled from 500 million to 1.3 billion  in 50 years.

China is hungry – for land, food and  energy.  While accounting for a fifth of the world’s population, its oil  consumption has  risen 35-fold in the past decade and Africa is now  providing a third of it;  imports of steel, copper and aluminium have  also shot up, with Beijing  devouring 80 per cent of world supplies.

On the job: Chinese building workers in ZambiaOn the job: Chinese building workers in Zambia

Fuelling its own boom at home, China  is also  desperate for new markets to sell goods. And Africa, with  non-existent health  and safety rules to protect against shoddy and  dangerous goods, is the perfect  destination.

The result of China’s demand for raw  materials and its sales of products to Africa is that turnover in trade  between Africa and China has risen expoentially.

However, there is a lethal price to  pay.  There is a sinister aspect to this invasion. Chinese-made war  planes roar  through the African sky, bombing opponents.

Chinese-made assault rifles and  grenades are  being used to fuel countless murderous civil wars, often  over the materials the  Chinese are desperate to buy.

After battling for years against the  white  colonial powers of Britain, France, Belgium and Germany,  post-independence  African leaders are happy to do business with China  for a straightforward  reason: cash.

With western loans linked to an  insistence  on democratic reforms and the need for ‘transparency’ in  using the money  (diplomatic language for rules to ensure dictators do  not pocket millions), the 

Chinese have proved much more relaxed about  what their billions are used for. Certainly, little of it reaches the continent’s impoverished 800  million  people. Much of it goes straight into the pockets of dictators.  In Africa,  corruption is a multi-billion pound industry and many experts believe that China  is fuelling the cancer.

The Chinese are contemptuous of such  criticism. To them, Africa is about pragmatism, not human rights. While  the  bounty has, not surprisingly, been welcomed by African dictators,  the people of  Africa are less impressed.

There have also been riots in Zambia, Angola  and Congo over the flood of Chinese immigrant workers. The  Chinese do not use  African labour where possible, saying black Africans  are lazy and  unskilled.

In Angola, the government has agreed  that 70  per cent of tendered public works must go to Chinese firms, most of which do not  employ Angolans. As well as enticing hundreds of  thousands to settle in Africa,  they have even shipped Chinese prisoners  to produce the goods  cheaply.

Where will it all end? As far as  Beijing is  concerned, it will stop only when Africa no longer has any  minerals or oil to  be extracted from the continent.

The people of this bewitching,  beautiful  continent, where humankind first emerged from the Great Rift  Valley,  desperately need progress. The Chinese are not here for that.

They are here for plunder. After centuries of  pain and war, Africa deserves better.

Source Article from http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/04/09/why-has-china-built-a-ghost-town-in-africa/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=why-has-china-built-a-ghost-town-in-africa

Views: 0

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Leave a Reply

Powered by WordPress | Designed by: Premium WordPress Themes | Thanks to Themes Gallery, Bromoney and Wordpress Themes