[A-List] Sino-Africa Relations

[mdriscoll at earthlink.net]

This is an interesting exchange. About thirty years ago, when I was in East
Africa for something like ten months, I was told of the contrast between
the US-sponsored road-building in Zambia, and the simultaneous construction
of a railroad over a similar route by the Chinese. My information was that
the Chinese lived on a scale very similar to that of the Zambians,
employing more simple labor-intensive means, making attempts to work with,
alongside, the Zambians. The Americans had giant earth moving equipment,
totally mechanized, lived apart with very different living conditions, and
had absolutely minimal contact with Zambians.

What made that believable to me was that earlier, we had been trying to
cross the Blue Nile, in order to get across the Sahara to the Ethiopian
highlands at Gondar. The bridge was out below Khartoum, but a friendly
Sudanese in a beat-up Peugeot led us upstream to where the Chinese were
building another bridge and a road to the Red Sea. Dinka tribesmen were
working on the project, with the Chinese crew leader, who clearly spoke the
language of the crew, directing them in laying large heavy pieces on the
river bank. He was down in the water, helping the crew to push and roll
great abutments into place. They ferried us across the Nile.

Then in the middle of the Sahara in eastern Sudan in 120 degree heat, we
were lost, not knowing which track to take to head toward Ethiopia. We
returned to where we had seen a Chinese construction camp on the desert
track. We knocked at the door of a low building, then waited while the
Chinese engineers dressed. One came out, ushered us in and offered us each
a Coke. When we had made known by means of our map what our problem was,
two of the engineers got in their Chinese jeep, drove twenty kilometers out
into the desert, pointed the way to us and left.

I tried to imagine an American crew, in that place in that heat, doing
something like that for a stranger.

Thirty some years later, we find the Chinese developing ass over teakettle,
and joining in the race for resources, with unequal exchange, different,
and no doubt no longer nearly so reciprocal, quid pro quos for their
efforts. This surely entails that they have moved on to capital-intensive
industry and construction, that they are probably moving their own work
forces, at "coolie" wages, around the globe to extract and retrieve these
resources and develop trade and industry there, private enterprise busily
in the process of accumulating capital. To say that they were not in on the
inception of the problems in Africa is not to say that they are not taking
advantage of them.

So I have no problem believing what Patrick Bond is saying, 

" Yellow peril is raging across the countries I know best in Southern
Africa, and 
even at the Southern African Social Forum in Harare last October, the 
largest applause in the opening ceremony went to xenophobes who insisted 
that "Fong Kong" products should be boycotted. South African workers are 
desperately trying to get relief but their corporatist leadership has 
decided to ask for Social Clauses from the WTO and bilateral deals between 
Pretoria and Beijing, instead of the hard work of allying with the Chinese 
working class."

I also think that Burkett and Hart-Landsberg have it right when they
comment, in a recent MR article on China, on the purging of concrete class
analysis, loss of feelings of solidarity, cooperation and eqalitarianism
among the Chinese people, the pitting of Chinese workers against other
workers in a competitive race to the bottom, and an uncritical acceptance
of export-led development and market socialism as a model.

I  would be interested to hear, aside from the benign rhetoric that
Henty.C.K. Liu cites on the part of Chinese leaders, something to indicate
that China recognizes and supports efforts on the part of the beleaguered
people of Africa to throw off their almost universally corrupt,
subservient, comprador rulers, so that some kind of genuine
self-determination could take hold.  Until that is addressed, it seems to
be all misery and downward spiral for them

Ralph.

> [Original Message]
> From: Macdonald Stainsby <mstainsby at resist.ca>
> To: The A-List <a-list at lists.econ.utah.edu>
> Date: 1/18/2006 10:46:45 AM
> Subject: Re: [A-List] Sino-Africa Relations
>
> Henry, don't be too one sided here. You know as well as I the history of 
> the support for movements such as Savimbi's Unita and others during the 
> CPC's attempts to undermine Soviet influence. Certainly China's role has 
> been small in Africa, but not always a good one either.
>
>
> Henry C.K. Liu wrote:
> > "the rise of Chinese fascist-capitalism" ?
> > 
> > Well, China cannot be blamed for the dismal political landscape left in 
> > Africa by Western imperialism. China did not put in place any "venal 
> > regimes" in Africa, or anywhere else on earth. Africa is one region
that 
> > China voluntarily and consistently incur trade deficits by policy. This 
> > type of Western liberal China bashing has also infected the African 
> > liberal left. There seems to be a lot of Western funded literature to 
> > warn Africans about the danger of Chinese friendship to the people of 
> > Africa. I experienced this type of fifth columnist sniping from several 
> > "leftist" lists and I hope the A-list will not be infested by the same 
> > destructive virus.
> > 
> > Henry C.K. Liu