Who will win: Africa or China? What will African people gain?
I discovered this commentary on the recent Beijing Sino-African meeting by a SME on China; slightly edited:
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How should we understand the triannual Africa-China summit, which just concluded in Beijing? With 53 out of 54 countries in Africa represented and singing the praises of the host, China unquestionably deems it a success. It was a “win” too for leaders of African countries who attended. But what do average citizens of the African countries get out of it? Are we seeing a “new version of colonialism” being put in place? President Xi Jinping hails the summit as a success in partnering with Africa to build up “a community of shared destiny.” He committed $60 billion to assist Africa or, in reality, to support the implementation of his flagship “Belt and Road” initiative in Africa. If every country in Africa were to receive an equal share, this amounts to just over $1 billion each. But the funding will not be evenly distributed. Some will benefit more than others.
Among the commitments for the $60 billion China has earmarked are $15 billion for grants and no cost or low-cost loans; $10 billion for a special Sino-African fund; and $5 billion for supporting African exports to China. There are, however, no details.
Xi has given no indication that Beijing will abandon its centralized approach in dishing out funds for the Belt and Road initiative. This implies that the bulk of the funding will remain tightly controlled and mostly used to finance major infrastructural projects, as before.
But there is one notable change, in the allocation of $5 billion to support African exports to China. True, it is only 8 percent of the total, and that ratio reflects Beijing’s priorities as regards assistance to African countries to build sustainable economic capacities, such as often has been the focus of Western and Japanese development funding. But it is a step in the right direction. It appears to be a response to clamours from ordinary Africans for assistance to promote manufacturing so that jobs will be created for them.
Citizens of most African countries benefit little from shiny new infrastructural facilities that they cannot afford to use. What they need most are jobs and opportunities. Investments in manufacturing, where Africans are employed, are what will make a difference to ordinary folks, not grandiose projects undertaken by Chinese contractors who often employ Chinese workers on foreign worksites.
Yet, what remains to be seen is how this $5 billion will be used to create and sustain manufacturing jobs in African countries. Again, no road map was unveiled. This is a pity as there is tremendous scope for China to relocate labour-intensive low-cost manufacturing to African countries as rising labour costs make them uncompetitive in China. Since such industries are mostly small and medium-sized private enterprises, they will not relocate to Africa and create jobs for Africans just because Xi has set aside this fund. Indeed, the promises of funds do not always become reality.
Is Xi’s effort, limited as it is a response to Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s recent articulation in Beijing of concern over “a new version of colonialism”? Mahathir’s reference was effective political rhetoric that enabled his country to back out of a number of unaffordable and non-essential grand projects that had the potential of creating another instance of the China “debt-trap” that has already ensnared a number of African and South Asian nations. That said, as an analytical concept it is not particularly useful. There is not one simple agreed definition of what colonialism means, let alone a “new version of colonialism.” The concept can easily be dismissed by Chinese leaders who claim that since China is a member of the global South, it is by definition not colonialist or imperialist.
This notwithstanding, Chinese leaders should not forget that action speaks louder than words. China does not need to deploy significant troops to any African country for it to be seen as behaving like a colonial power. Most African countries have a colonial past and they know what a “colonial relationship” looks like.
Historically, flag followed trade and informal empire often preceded the creation of a formal imperial relationship. British imperialists of the Victorian era did not have a blueprint for imperial conquest, so the lack of one in Beijing means little. The British Empire was created in a fit of absence of mind, when expanding British economic interests made it irresistible for the British Crown to protect British interests and incrementally assert imperial control. The British Empire also exemplified the most cost-effective imperial expansion. It mostly avoided expansive conquest and relied instead on working with local leaders – a “win-win” of an earlier age.
Whether China under Xi Jinping will follow the path of British imperialists of the past only time will tell. But citizens of African countries who witness rapid expansion of Chinese economic interests will not wait to draw their own conclusions. If Beijing works with them for their benefit, rather than for that of their leaders, they are likely to welcome China as a partner. So if Beijing is serious about making its partnership with Africa a genuine “win-win,” it will have to focus on projects that will benefit ordinary people in African countries, not just their national leaders and Beijing itself. This will be the acid test, but again, there are so far scant details of Beijing’s intentions.
Somewhere I have a UK commentary too, behind a paywall and will try to summarize that - it is now a few weeks old being published when Mrs may was on her three stop African tour.
James Mann And His Prescient Book “The China Fantasy”
This article on Sinocism an online subscription newsletter by a Sinologist, Bill Bishop, and is an updated commentary on a 2007 book 'The China Fantasy' by James Mann.
It opens with:
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a short book arguing that Western elites misrepresented the benefits of engagement with China and that prosperity and capitalism might not, as they claimed, eventually bring democracy to the PRC......I have come to believe that this is the most important and prescient American book on China of the 21st century. I urge you to read it.
Link:https://sinocism.com/james-mann-and-...china-fantasy/
Link to Bill Bishop's slim bio:https://nb.sinocism.com/subscribe#about
I have not heard of this book, nor either author and for once some of the comments on the newsletter commentary are interesting, sadly several are duplicated.
How China is quietly weaponizing overseas tourism
A twist to power politics:
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The reason China is able to use tourists as a political bargaining chip is that, since the turn of the millennium, the number of overseas trips made by Chinese tourists has
boomed from 10.5m to 145m – an increase of 1,380 per cent. This makes China the world’s most powerful outbound market, leapfrogging the US, spending over $300bn overseas per year.
Examples are cited: Palau Islands, Turkey, Japan and South Korea.
Link:https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/c...ourism-palau/?
Not that such a travel / tourism ban is new; more the scale and having obedient tourists to command. Boycotting the Moscow Olympics in 1980 after the Afghan invasion comes to mind. I am sure there are others, such as 'travel advisory' notices after terrorist attacks, e.g. Sinai that stopped most UK tourists travelling there.
Xi's Regime Plot for World Domination Exposed
Maybe the title of the article contains a little hyperbole, or maybe not.
https://nypost.com/2018/12/22/how-ar...mination-plot/
How arrest of Chinese ‘princess’ exposes regime’s world domination plot
Quote:
The “Five Eyes” — Great Britain, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the US — have over the past year waged a concerted campaign to block the Chinese tech giant from dominating next-generation wireless networks around the world. Not only have they largely kept Huawei out of their own countries, they have convinced other countries like Japan, India and Germany to go along, too.
Whoever controls the 5G networks will control the world — or at least large parts of it.
Yet Huawei is far from finished. The company has grown into a global brand over the past two decades because, as a “national champion,” it is constantly being fed and nourished by the party and the military with low-interest-rate loans, privileged access to a protected domestic market, and other preferential treatment.
The article goes on to point out how Huawei supports China's intelligence organizations, and how her detention resulted in 3 Canadians being detained in so called secret prisons in China with threats to arrest more in retaliation.
It ends with,
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The real payoff of her arrest lies elsewhere. It has exposed the massive campaign of espionage that Huawei is carrying out around the world at the behest of the Party. It has revealed how that Party dreams of a new world order in which China, not America, is dominant.
It also links to his book on Amazon, "Bully of Asia." It is worth reading the summary on Amazon in my opinion. I don't think I have seen any reviews of this book on SWJ yet?
Chinese Hawk makes uninformed Comment
If all the Chinese hawks are this stupid, they have more worry about than we do. If he really thinks killing 5,000 sailors will cause America to cower in a corner he is not a student of history.
http://chinascope.org/archives/17126
Chinese Hawk Admiral: Strike at What the U.S. Fears
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Luo Yuan claimed that the US-China trade war “is definitely not a simple economic and trade friction” but an “important strategic issue.” The origin of the conflict is that “the U.S. national strategy has changed.”
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In his speech, Luo Yuan strongly advocated that China should respond with “asymmetric counterattacks.”
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Luo Yuan said that the “five fundamental foundations of the United States” are the military, the dollar, talent, the ballot, and the creation of enemies. Among them, in the military, “the United States is most afraid of death.” Luo suggested using a missile to sink one U.S. ship and cause 5,000 casualties, and two with 10,000 casualties. “Let’s see if the U.S. is afraid or not.”
Oops, they're not afraid, now what Admiral?
Beijing’s Nuclear Option: Why a U.S.-Chinese War Could Spiral Out of Control
An updated article by Caitlin Talmadge an Associate Professor of Security Studies at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. It is one of several articles fully available in the latest 'Foreign Affairs': Do Nuclear Weapons Matter?
Near the beginning two passages as a "taster":
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If deployed against China, the Pentagon’s preferred style of conventional warfare would be a potential recipe for nuclear escalation. Since the end of the Cold War, the United States’ signature approach to war has been simple: punch deep into enemy territory in order to rapidly knock out the opponent’s key military assets at minimal cost. But the Pentagon developed this formula in wars against Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Serbia, none of which was a nuclear power.
China, by contrast, not only has nuclear weapons; it has also intermingled them with its conventional military forces, making it difficult to attack one without attacking the other. This means that a major U.S. military campaign targeting China’s conventional forces would likely also threaten its nuclear arsenal. Faced with such a threat, Chinese leaders could decide to use their nuclear weapons while they were still able to.
Link:https://reader.foreignaffairs.com/20...2/content.html