China's Expanding Role in Africa

[Dayuhan]

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

...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...

...Exclusive, gated compounds, serving only Chinese food, and where no blacks are allowed, are being built all over the continent...

...'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.'

I once met an Angolan businessman in Dubai who told me "we didn't know what racism was until we met the Chinese".

I'm not entirely sure that it's "the West" that should be "very worried" over all this, It looks to me like something that could very easily blow up in the faces of the Chinese, especially with Chinese-owned farms worked by Chinese labor setting up. How long before the backlash starts? How long before a government that's cut all kinds of cozy deals with the Chinese is threatened by insurgents who want to nationalize Chinese investments and throw the colonists out, and the Chinese are suddenly debating how to "do FID", "do COIN", and otherwise maintain a friendly government that can't govern in power?

I don't see any reason to suspect that China's colonization of Africa will end any better - or any differently - than Europe's. Let them go ahead and bite off bigger and bigger pieces; not like there's anything we can do to stop them, and sooner or later they'll choke on it.

[AdamG]

Jabin Jacob, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies in New Delhi, is also skeptical about the string of pearls theory.

He says India's policy planners should be more concerned with the way China is using its military in what are called "military operations other than war," such as anti-piracy patrols off the coast of Somalia.

"How will you deal with a China that is actively crisscrossing the Indian Ocean, and building up relations with other Indian Ocean littoral states where India has traditionally held sway?" he asks.

India needs to involve itself actively with its smaller neighbors and their problems, if it wants to maintain its influence, he says.

http://www.npr.org/2011/06/20/137061...s-ports-nearby

[M-A Lagrange]

Adam,

A very interresting point. India is with China an emerging power in Africa. But also a power which is present since now several centuries. It's always supprising for new comers to see a huge Hindu temple in Kampala, Uganda, in the middle of the African continent.
Also India has been involved since several years in peace keeping operations (in competition with Pakistan) in Central Africa.
I do not know how far Africa is a priority for the Indian authorities but they are every where (Just like the Chinese). And not just to run smal street shops. Indian companies in Cebtral Africa are deeply involvedinto mining activities (just like the Chinese), large scale farming (just like the Chinese), cheap goods import (just like the Chinese)...

India VS China is coming to be the next big struggle in Africa.

[Ray]

Indians in Africa should not be surprising.

They had gone as labour for the British.

They stayed behind and became commercial successes.

I believe of late the Indian Govt is looking at Africa commercially.

I think Indians should do better than the Chinese since they will be able to adjust to the laid back attitude of Africa since they too are laid back in attitude.