China's Expanding Role in Africa

[Dayuhan]

Is this a perception or is it factually correct? If you know what India business men have been up to in Africa... On the other hand, the CCP can enforce good behaviour pretty rapidly if it wants to.

The CCP can't even enforce good behaviour in China: the corruption in the Chinese economy, much of it involving people with close to the CCP, is absolutely staggering. The West may have illusions that China is some sort of unstoppable economic juggernaut under tight central control, but the Chinese elite know better, and they're salting away money abroad as fast as they can, against the day when things fall apart.

Why the italics on democracy? India could be democratic, but there is nothing in real terms that distinguishes China's Africa policy from India's Africa policy. The same scramble for energy resources, farm lands, bad labour practices etc. The major difference is that the Chinese government is more focused, disciplined and coordinated. The Indians aren't but they'd love to be doing every thing the Chinese are doing in Africa because unlike the West they really need Africa's oil and minerals and the Chinese are beating them to the race.

Democratic regimes do not necessarily behave any better than non-democratic ones once they get outside their own borders.

Forgive my ignorance when it comes to those oil folks - Why haven't they been sent packing already ? I don't want to strike comparisons with the late Mobutu and his financial wizardry (which is why half of the Lebanese and Chinese never left Zaire), but I don't understand why Nigeria and her people don't go at it alone and get all the oil hungry dogs out.

That would be about money. Those who govern want the money, both because they need it to run the country and because a good bit of it goes into their own pockets. They don't have the expertise to run the industry themselves, so they deal with foreign companies.

The reality of foreign companies, regardless of where they're from, is that they will be as bad as you let them be, or as good as you force them to be. In the west there have been some attempts to constrain bribery, environmental abuse, human rights abuse etc from the home side, though effectiveness is limited. Overall, though, it's up to the host country government to establish and enforce limits. The question is whether they'll be willing to do that if they're on the payroll of a foreign investor.

Why do you think the Chinese are spreading all that baksheesh around and handing out favors to build influence and popularity, if not to protect themselves against unwanted interference in their business down the line? It may work or it may not - that's up to Africans - but I wouldn't expect there's anything resembling charity involved.

Of course western companies, governments, NGOs etc don't practice charity either: whatever they "give" is calculated to advance their own interests and agendas. Human nature is what it is.