Is this the Economist that got into trouble in Siam?
Blog Note: There is a major debate going on at the Economist.com on China in Africa.
While what China does in Africa, may first appear very distance from Thailand. But in fact there are some very important implications, such as China’s contract farming to grow rice in Africa. If that still sounds far away, in fact, China’s offer to Laos, right here close to Thailand, on contract farming-just got a Thai company contract with Laos kicked-out. The big news in Thailand is that China says it will invest about US$1 billion in Thailand in the short-to-medium term. But the amount that is going to Africa is about 7-10 times, Thailand figure.
The debate going on at the Economist.com, have some policy implications-namely the Economist does a wrap up of these debates into semi-research paper that are published and most of the European press follows these Economist semi-research papers. Obviously, the government and policy makers notices.
- The following is one opinion from the Economist.com
JEAN-NOEL wrote:
Dear Sir,
I disagree with the thinking of this house. As French, though I am belonging to the wrong country to write about colonialism as well as neo-colonialism, I will try to demonstrate why I believe that China, as a country and a state, is behaving worse than any other colonialist countries in the past.
To show it, I will use the history of China.
The Chinese Empire has been built as a country located in the centre of its influence zone. The character describing “Mainland China” is itself describing the centre of the World. The Chinese Empire has during all its history successfully succeeded in maintaining countries around under control through unfair relationship. These relationships were based on the fact that the state of China will help against any kind of external aggression and in return for this protection the State will receive regular payments. This system was the key for establishing a system which lasted until the XX century. The system had far more disadvantages than advantages. And some of these disadvantages are still influencing the state of development of these countries in Asia, and will do with Africa.
The largest disadvantage has been that such countries as the Mekong countries where maintained in an underdeveloped state. They had an organization of state fitting exactly to the Chinese one. Their Kings or establishment should be agreed by the Chinese State.
Now looking to what is happening in African countries where the PRC is “investing”, I can see that the ones wanting to receive these investments there is the same trend.
An aspect which is not enough considered today is that the so called investments are not made by “private” Chinese companies. They are made by the Chinese state companies. And as a measure of return on investment the political influence on how the country behaves is the most important one for these companies, rather than the profit.
The countries around China had to live with the fact that that the resources they could supply could not be controlled by them. They had to deal with plenty of Chinese civil servants, armed men and Chinese Mafiosi. Reading the articles from The Economist, I can see that there are plenty of examples of the same behavior of the Chinese state in Africa.
The Chinese state knows very well that Africans can be their best Ambassadors in their own country, so as done in the past, they receive today some students or future leaders in China and educate them, sending them back with gifts of importance locally but not for China.
Do the people of this house remember the fact that African students had been thrown through windows in the University of Beijing in the 90’s? Have the student’s organization in China changed so much that they now welcome African students?
Is it possible for African students to stay in China and go up the social Chinese power system? No! African students continue to be treated as “inferior people” in China. The general idea is that if the Chinese state wants to survive as it is, it needs influence wherever it is possible, and African people educated in China will help the actual Chinese state to be maintained onto power directly like by talking at UN through their “African pupils” or indirectly by acting in their own country in favor of their “educators”.
The business made between the countries under Chinese rules and China is made only to serve the business of China. This disadvantage is often related with plenty of stories about “wrong scales” used to measure weight of rice at boarders or inside the ruled countries by Chinese merchants.
In Africa now the stories of contracts made under “unclear rules” or contracts giving not only the largest share to the Chinese state companies, but also allowing these state companies to come with their own personnel replacing the Africans are now established.
The fact that Chinese do not only deal but replace the locals is a sign that they not only like to win, they also like to establish their own system of measure inside countries which they do not consider “civilized”. The last disadvantage I see, which is so difficult, to establish because it is one which is so much uncertain, is related to tyranny versus democracy.
- The Chinese Empire has never been seen as democratic.
Did democracy appear easily in China? Did it stay long? No. And today as Taiwan maintains its democratic stance, the Chinese state does whatever it can to reduce the differences between Taiwan ROC and PRC to a geographical question. With such a history of difficulties related to human rights, to power of law, how can one believe that what has not emerged yet in the Chinese state could be helped by the same Chinese state to be brought to life in Africa?
Africans have better to deal with South America or India for the sub-Saharan countries and with Europe and Turkey or other democracies of the Middle East Region than with the Chinese state for what regards process of democracy to be reinforced or implemented.
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