Is China Colonizing Africa?

Globalization managed to skip Africa by for years. There were several reasons for this. Africa was considered to have poor infrastructure, political instability, and low income. Everything changed when China came along. The country was desperate for raw materials and energy to power their growing manufacturing capacity. They put Africa on the globalization map. The continent was placed right next to Shanghai in terms of Beijing’s business priorities.

Africa was at the top of the Beijing economic agenda. It was an easy and convenient target. Chinese leaders sent business delegations to every capital in Africa year after year. These delegates secured infrastructure projects and proposed trade deals, converting Africa into a “second continent” for China.

Howard W. French describes the situation in the book China’s Second Continent, explaining; ““Sensing that Africa had been cast aside by the West in the wake of the Cold War, Beijing saw the continent as the perfect proving ground for some Chinese companies to cut their teeth in international business. It certainly did not hurt that Africa was also the repository of an immense share of global resources—raw materials that were vital both for China’s extraordinary ongoing industrial expansion and for its across-the-board push for national reconstruction.”
The long arm of globalization had touched Africa. Trade between China and the “second continent” of Africa reached close to $400 billion in 2015.

Not everyone feels that China is attempting to turn Africa into a Chinese colony though. One such person is Ching Kwan Lee, a professor at the University of California. Lee argued in the Specter of Global China: Politics, Labor, and Foreign Investment in Africa (University of Chicago Press, 2017) that the investments the Chinese state made in Africa weren’t made as “imperialists” or “colonialists”. Nor were ones by private corporations. Chinese corporations aren’t being motivated by profits. They have a long-term horizon in mind, and they make for good local citizens. The Chinese people in Africa pay their fair share of taxes to the countries they do business with. Lee goes so far as to contend that Chinese corporations actually promote African independence and autonomy, rather than the usual dependence that is associated with colonialism. China is helping Africa to stand by themselves, rather than making Africa dependent on them.

Maybe it would be best to avoid sharing this opinion with the Pakistanis and Sri Lankans that are heavily indebted to China. These are the people that are most at-risk of becoming modern-day colonies for Beijing.

Source: Finance.yahoo.com